HL2RP Discussion - Garry's Mod

HL2RP Discussion

211 replies, posted
In This Thread

So yeah. post your thoughts, opinions, etc. I pretty much made this so people don't keep going off-topic in a certain thread.

[QUOTE=FlatPancake;44272826]This ends up being an issue when you have players who aren't as familiar with the rules or who show more difficulty in separating themselves as players from their characters in order to deliberate their actions fairly and "realistically." You get a lot of players arguing and causing conflict with the person of importance who is acting as an arbitrator, especially when you consider the amount of new players or less "serious minded roleplayers" who are often involved in combat scenarios. Even ignoring these sorts of people, being forced into a negative situation that causes detriment to your own character is something a lot of people can't seem to grasp, especially if death is a possibility. On one hand, you don't want servers where SWEPs instantly kill you and you get no enjoyment, but at the other hand, if you have everything moving at a snail's pace, then people are going to find it troubling when a situation that would play out in minutes takes an hour or more. This also becomes problematic when it involves scenarios that include more than, like, ten people. You have to start enforcing a time delay to an extent as you try to coordinate the scene, even if you try to only do it only at the major steps. You get people who weren't initially involved getting involved but being forced to stand aside and wait because things aren't moving at on a realistic time scale.[/QUOTE] This is all correct, which is why good players and a heavy emphasis on server rules would be important. I mean like a big MOTD saying what you'll be getting into, complete with an "I understand" button. I'd want a radically dangerous sort of RP, I suppose.

[QUOTE=TurtleeyFP;44272543]Combat without any death is really tedious and pointless. It doesn't have any impact, and after a while it gets stagnant - nothing's at risk. [/Quote] Don't have constant combat either then. Keep the rebels discreet, the Union more dystopian and rely on more brainwashing than murder... y'know. Open rebellion has gotten stale and mentally disabled Combine that can't use decent planning or human psychology to their advantage are simply poorly made.

Yeah, guns should be extremely rare, reserved to rebel heads and such. Arms dealers will be around, but you'll have to ICly encounter them, get good relations with them and then pay steep prices. The rebellion should be more about creating propaganda, passing out food, helping people out of the city, not starting firefights in the plaza. CP's should rely on interrogation and fear tactics. Less gunning people down and more dragging them off to room 101 in order to fuck their minds over. Maybe a special branch of the MPF just for these special interrogations? All interrogations are done by regular units, but when we get someone special in one of these interrogators will walk in and do their thing. And it shouldn't be tearing out eyeballs and scalding and such either. Mental trauma, real 1984 stuff that HL2 was based off of.

[QUOTE=RaxaHax;44272876]This is all correct, which is why good players and a heavy emphasis on server rules would be important. I mean like a big MOTD saying what you'll be getting into, complete with an "I understand" button. I'd want a radically dangerous sort of RP, I suppose.[/QUOTE] And I won't deny that such a thing isn't possible, but what you get is a severely limited playerbase when moving forward with a server like this. I recall several attempts at such a level of dedication back in 2009, and I remember several hours of one on one interactions within city apartments on a citizen character I had created. I knew from the get go, however, that such a thing couldn't last and soon enough, the hype of launching such a server died out within a week, with the small number of players leaving back to the normal TnB servers. If you want to have the server be public and encouraging to new players, the community as a whole has to be willing to accept and to roleplay with people of all qualities of roleplay. The MOTD is often ignored and surveys for people to join are pretty pointless. You can have a script, and you can spend hundreds of hours writing a story and timeline to explain how and why things are, but if the community isn't welcoming and responsive to all the type of roleplayers they'll encounter, the server is bound to run itself into a ditch. At the same time, you need to prevent players from developing any sort of elitism that will cause them to incite conflict with other players. This brings back my point of players needing to understand a separation between themselves and their characters (which is difficult given the number of people who basically roleplay themselves), something that has always been problematic but has only worsened in the past few years. [QUOTE=Monkah;44272907]Don't have constant combat either then. Keep the rebels discreet, the Union more dystopian and rely on more brainwashing than murder... y'know. Open rebellion has gotten stale and mentally disabled Combine that can't use decent planning or human psychology to their advantage are simply poorly made.[/QUOTE] For a server to move forward, while each individual player can have their own story and development, there needs to be some sort of conflict between individuals or groups. It doesn't have to be large, nor does everyone have to be involved, but it's practically necessary for the server itself to see development. Rebels can be discreet and hide all they want, but unless they make plans to push forward their operations, then they'll end up sitting in their dungeons moping about endlessly. If they want to move forward, they are bound to come into conflict with the Combine no matter how subtle and quiet they try to move. Propaganda is a useful tool that's not often used, but it's a difficult one to grasp and you get a lot of pseudo-intellectuals trying to do more than they really can. On the opposite end, the Union exists to be a police force and thus a part of their nature is usually to try and remove any anti-civil activity or persons within the city. Even if you have players roleplaying Civil Protection whose only desire is to receive the benefits of food and better treatment, the server and story calls for there to be some amount of threat for the CPs to eliminate the resistance. In the end, constant combat shouldn't be done, but it needs to be a constant threat on both ends of the spectrum or otherwise nothing moves forward.

I just talked with my old friend who helped me run the Cabaret about currency - namely, how the server made currency have value. This is always something I've wondered. In literally every other roleplay I've joined, tokens had no value. On a good server you can buy something pointless with them, on a normal one they're just dead weight. This server had an explosion of businesses, trading, bonuty-hunting; there was something that made money desirable. After talking with him, I realized it was because there was a single, central supplier to get everything from. The not-combine were the only main supplier of essentials like guns, food, ammo, etc. Other people could resell them but they all came from that one place, which is what made money valuable. People couldn't just get an admin to spawn them a gun, or spawn themselves some ammo, or get it from an admin "gun dealer" who didn't have any use for it - they needed to actually spend money if they wanted something. It was a big gold sink, and from there that caused a big boom in trading and businesses. People actually risked their lives to kill a bounty, because they needed money to keep going. On the other hand, having a single entity being the supplier of everything could lead to disaster. Does anyone else have stories of how a server made money have worth?

[QUOTE=FlatPancake;44272982]For a server to move forward, while each individual player can have their own story and development, there needs to be some sort of conflict between individuals or groups. It doesn't have to be large, nor does everyone have to be involved, but it's practically necessary for the server itself to see development. Rebels can be discreet and hide all they want, but unless they make plans to push forward their operations, then they'll end up sitting in their dungeons moping about endlessly. If they want to move forward, they are bound to come into conflict with the Combine no matter how subtle and quiet they try to move. Propaganda is a useful tool that's not often used, but it's a difficult one to grasp and you get a lot of pseudo-intellectuals trying to do more than they really can. On the opposite end, the Union exists to be a police force and thus a part of their nature is usually to try and remove any anti-civil activity or persons within the city. Even if you have players roleplaying Civil Protection whose only desire is to receive the benefits of food and better treatment, the server and story calls for there to be some amount of threat for the CPs to eliminate the resistance. In the end, constant combat shouldn't be done, but it needs to be a constant threat on both ends of the spectrum or otherwise nothing moves forward.[/QUOTE] You're confusing conflict with combat. The 'rebels' (and I hate to use that word) can fight the Combine without using guns, bombs or any combination thereof. You don't need to go and shoot to do it, and you don't need to murder all the cops to do it. Also guys as I said before, I know how to use hammer and would be happy to help.

[QUOTE=FlatPancake;44272982]And I won't deny that such a thing isn't possible, but what you get is a severely limited playerbase when moving forward with a server like this. I recall several attempts at such a level of dedication back in 2009, and I remember several hours of one on one interactions within city apartments on a citizen character I had created. I knew from the get go, however, that such a thing couldn't last and soon enough, the hype of launching such a server died out within a week, with the small number of players leaving back to the normal TnB servers. If you want to have the server be public and encouraging to new players, the community as a whole has to be willing to accept and to roleplay with people of all qualities of roleplay. The MOTD is often ignored and surveys for people to join are pretty pointless. You can have a script, and you can spend hundreds of hours writing a story and timeline to explain how and why things are, but if the community isn't welcoming and responsive to all the type of roleplayers they'll encounter, the server is bound to run itself into a ditch. At the same time, you need to prevent players from developing any sort of elitism that will cause them to incite conflict with other players. This brings back my point of players needing to understand a separation between themselves and their characters (which is difficult given the number of people who basically roleplay themselves), something that has always been problematic but has only worsened in the past few years. [/QUOTE] Very true, perhaps if this were an exclusively FP server we could see some numbers, but I couldn't imagine anything over 20 players at a time. You could say my ideas are pretty much "In a perfect world...". Ideas I've gathered after being unsatisfied with the lengthy arguments and ugly aftermaths that result from things like deadly events and fatal character conflicts. I'd love to boot up my own server, enforce some crazy set of new rules and watch them be heralded as amazing, but the problem is it would probably never compete. It'd be harsh and unfriendly, and probably not a whole lot of fun either. It'd also probably get DDoSed a lot if it were popular too.

[QUOTE=Masterofstars;44272981]Yeah, guns should be extremely rare, reserved to rebel heads and such. Arms dealers will be around, but you'll have to ICly encounter them, get good relations with them and then pay steep prices. The rebellion should be more about creating propaganda, passing out food, helping people out of the city, not starting firefights in the plaza. CP's should rely on interrogation and fear tactics. Less gunning people down and more dragging them off to room 101 in order to fuck their minds over. Maybe a special branch of the MPF just for these special interrogations? All interrogations are done by regular units, but when we get someone special in one of these interrogators will walk in and do their thing. And it shouldn't be tearing out eyeballs and scalding and such either. Mental trauma, real 1984 stuff that HL2 was based off of.[/QUOTE] I disagree with most of this. Although I think guns should be rarely used, I don't think their presence should be rare, as it makes little sense for a rebel force to try and survive without some way to defend themselves. If we let go all the actual constraints that would prevent rebel forces from remaining incognito and hidden within the citizen population, then there's reason for why they might be unarmed at the present time, but they're more than likely going to have some amount of stockpile because they know the opposing forces aren't going to be as lenient and less likely to shoot them just because they're unarmed. Obviously they should have some objective besides starting a firefight, but removing characters out of the server brings up the issue of separating the players, and passing out food is a short term solution because no one is going to roleplay starvation to the point that would likely exist, and it's especially doubtful people will go as far as to die as a result. Arms dealers and the black market aspect that has always been present in HL2RP is something I've never fully agreed upon, simply because there has to be a source for all the supplies and when you try to provide a reasonable excuse, it often falls short. It's always either something or someone that exists outside the server or relates back to some administrative backing, both of which I can understand, but still comes across as a sort of deus ex machina. Civil Protection in general has always been stupid and I've never liked the idea that they're a brainwashed, paramilitary police force filled with brutality and interrogators. They're shown to be that way during the few instances in the beginning of Half-Life 2, but that's done only because they're the antagonist within the game. It's presumed the people in Civil Protection are just normal citizens, and I think it gives more room for roleplay if it's explained that they receive reward for such behavior and possible punishment for the opposite. Having some sort of designated interrogator seems contrived and I always felt like in general they always end up being some sort of sadistic power fantasy more than a realistic gestapo-like menacing threat. [QUOTE=TurtleeyFP;44273013]I just talked with my old friend who helped me run the Cabaret about currency - namely, how the server made currency have value. This is always something I've wondered. In literally every other roleplay I've joined, tokens had no value. On a good server you can buy something pointless with them, on a normal one they're just dead weight. This server had an explosion of businesses, trading, bonuty-hunting; there was something that made money desirable. After talking with him, I realized it was because there was a single, central supplier to get everything from. The not-combine were the only main supplier of essentials like guns, food, ammo, etc. Other people could resell them but they all came from that one place, which is what made money valuable. People couldn't just get an admin to spawn them a gun, or spawn themselves some ammo, or get it from an admin "gun dealer" who didn't have any use for it - they needed to actually spend money if they wanted something. It was a big gold sink, and from there that caused a big boom in trading and businesses. People actually risked their lives to kill a bounty, because they needed money to keep going. On the other hand, having a single entity being the supplier of everything could lead to disaster. Does anyone else have stories of how a server made money have worth?[/QUOTE] A functioning economy requires that it be as decentralized as possible with input primarily being done by the players themselves, with admins being prevented from respawning and dropping script items at their leisure. Gold sinks like scripted commodities need to have a way of being lost, such as guns degrading over time unless you acquire tool sets and/or repair kits to fix said gun. Food necessities can only be truly enforced if there's some sort of hunger script that forces it to be a requirement, but I think it in general it's agreed such a move is rather annoying and intrusive; if a player wants to roleplay eating food, they shouldn't be blocked because they lack some arbitrary scripted currency and suffer a punishment by the script as a result. Taking a word from someone else who thought more on this, it needs to be an organic process that happens naturally, but I can't say I have any real input on what would be reasonable without being invasive or destructive.

[QUOTE=FlatPancake;44273135]I disagree with most of this. Although I think guns should be rarely used, I don't think their presence should be rare, as it makes little sense for a rebel force to try and survive without some way to defend themselves.[/QUOTE] They should have to survive by hiding and such, it's not plausible for rebels to survive by straight up fighting the Combine. [QUOTE=FlatPancake;44273135]Civil Protection in general has always been stupid and I've never liked the idea that they're a brainwashed, paramilitary police force filled with brutality and interrogators. They're shown to be that way during the few instances in the beginning of Half-Life 2, but that's done only because they're the antagonist within the game. It's presumed the people in Civil Protection are just normal citizens, and I think it gives more room for roleplay if it's explained that they receive reward for such behavior and possible punishment for the opposite. Having some sort of designated interrogator seems contrived and I always felt like in general they always end up being some sort of sadistic power fantasy more than a realistic gestapo-like menacing threat. [/QUOTE] I agree fully, but they're still based on 1984. They might be people just in it for food but they're job is to be the evil military force. The conflict between the CP and the idea that he is the bad guy has always been great RP that people in the MPF go through.

[QUOTE=ZestyLemons;44273152]Sorta unrelated but also sorta related: I think guns would work a lot better in most cases for RP if they didn't actually deal damage, but just tell you that you got struck in 'X' body part by 'Y' calibre round. Then you could RP your big dramatic injury/death/whatever instead of ragdolling hilariously on the ground and promptly respawning. I think some of the sudden, spontaneous RP was some of the best, and I'd think stuff like this would promote that.[/QUOTE] Or maybe if you died, you would be banned from the server for like a week. That way you would fear death and avoid just shooting everyone.

[QUOTE=Masterofstars;44273206]They should have to survive by hiding and such, it's not plausible for rebels to survive by straight up fighting the Combine.[/quote] Of course, and I'm not arguing for any sort of direct combative conflict, but the [B]threat[/B] of such an occurrence should be present no matter what the resistance is doing and thus supplying themselves with weapons of some type seems more like a guaranteed fact. Whether they use it depends on the situation and the characters (as does actually having the weapon), since they're more likely to use it as a last resort and instead take to high tailing it at first notice more often than not. [QUOTE=Masterofstars;44273206]I agree fully, but they're still based on 1984. They might be people just in it for food but they're job is to be the evil military force. The conflict between the CP and the idea that he is the bad guy has always been great RP that people in the MPF go through.[/QUOTE] The whole internal conflict of character is something that can be enforced on both ends of the fighting factions, it's just something that's less explored in most servers. Even when it is, you usually only get a small minority of players who do this when it's something each character would come to question upon themselves. The Combine/Union are effectively endorsing a civil war between humanity and itself, where the bulk force on both ends are humans of varying backgrounds and history, who have likely suffered tragedy from human forces as much as Combine/Union forces. In the end, I'm not entirely sure where our disagreement is here. While I'm not denying that Civil Protection should generally be more thought police than they often are presented, I'm just saying I never liked the idea of them being inhuman and faceless like they're often represented as.

[QUOTE=Blockhead;44273264]Or maybe if you died, you would be banned from the server for like a week. That way you would fear death and avoid just shooting everyone.[/QUOTE] You should fear death because it's the absolute end of your character in most all circumstance. At the same time it should also be accepted, I've seen rebels do a preposterous amount of operating without a single casualty for months. Imagine the drama that would affect people if one of them were to die, even out of nowhere.

[QUOTE=Blockhead;44273264]Or maybe if you died, you would be banned from the server for like a week. That way you would fear death and avoid just shooting everyone.[/QUOTE] Your character dies forever, that's enough punishment if you're doing proper RP. People should be able to go on and start anew, with a fresh character. Bans aren't needed.

I'm just going to say this again: HL2, despite being a fantastic setting, does not make for very good RP for 80% of the people who join. Civilians have no purpose, they are simply the "newbie" stage that everyone starts out as and that few people escape. This is the 80% group. Nobody wants to be a civilian because civilians have nothing to do, forced events can only provide so much fun and anything novel (the backbone of everything humans find fun) is discouraged or stamped out because of the combine's stance of "humanity = evil". Commerce (the only thing allowed, and sometimes just straight up not on a lot of servers) is piss boring as everyone with a loan system can buy anything in the shop (ie: Everyone) and tokens or credits have no value since they either can't buy anything good or the market is so oversaturated by admins spawning things that tokens are rendered worthless. Esseitnally this just leaves the civies are the inbetween stage for rebels or combine, which make up the other 10 percent of players on any given server. RPing with either faction is discouraged by either lore (combine can't be RP'd with positively by design. You can be a faceless cog in their machine that follows the rules or a troublemaker) or server imposed bullshit that comes about because of elitism (lol you wanna hang with the rebels? Stop being such a minge and go away!). Even if you do happen to get anywhere with them you're still treated like dirt when you're new. An RP server that wants to live needs to do away with these problems concerning civilians before anything else. The game has to be fun for the majority of the people on the server, not a skinner box for people hoping to get power. Most (read: all) spend all their fucking time catering to either the rebels or the combine. It sucks.

The problem with that perspective is that it results from players who have no ability to create a character who is real and a person. Administrators can play a strong role in creating ways for citizens to interact within the constraints of a Combine-occupied city, but at the same time, it's strongly reliant that the players themselves can create their own roleplay scenario. Internal conflicts, emotional issues, philosophical debates, mental or physical trauma and/or recovery from such injuries, and others are various things that a citizen can do alone. Reciting stories to others, creating kinship networks, relationships and bonds, discussing various topics or disturbances in the city, engaging in religious or covert activities, and forming arguments because of conflicting views are things they can do with other citizens. Combine-monitored recreational areas can be established by administrators (or by the Combine, but it's more feasible if the former does it) to allow an escape for the citizens that provides the sense of luxury and freedom that doesn't exist, where they can also take part in illicit activities or illegal trading of goods, propaganda, literature, or any other commodity. These are just an example of some things citizens are more than capable of doing on their own as well as with others that are within reason of the average interpretation of Half-Life 2 lore, save for maybe the last one unless the server is more reasonable. If we lighten up on how "evil" the Combine/Union are portrayed, many more things are opened up for them to take part in that I'm sure I could come up with. As I said earlier, a functioning economy is reliant on the players themselves more than the admins, so I won't deny that commerce and businesses are often improperly done, but again, it's not as if that's the only thing citizens are limited to. Whenever people complain about how they feel wronged because a Judgment Waiver has restricted them to their building or apartment, they're failing to realize the potential for interpersonal interactions that could be had within those confines. As far as the idea of progression from citizen to resistance or Civil Protection, it's a commonly seen characteristic of HL2RP but is in no way necessary, especially if the people roleplaying have some sense of story writing. Roleplay between citizen and these two general factions is more than capable if the lore isn't written by an idiot, and Civil Protection can be human and still be a "cog in their machine." I don't deny that what you've talked about does occur in servers, but you sound more like you had bad experiences and see fit to generalize while being pessimistic over any possible endeavors.

[QUOTE=doomkiwi;44273358]I'm just going to say this again: HL2, despite being a fantastic setting, does not make for very good RP for 80% of the people who join. Civilians have no purpose, they are simply the "newbie" stage that everyone starts out as and that few people escape. This is the 80% group. Nobody wants to be a civilian because civilians have nothing to do, forced events can only provide so much fun and anything novel (the backbone of everything humans find fun) is discouraged or stamped out because of the combine's stance of "humanity = evil". Commerce (the only thing allowed, and sometimes just straight up not on a lot of servers) is piss boring as everyone with a loan system can buy anything in the shop (ie: Everyone) and tokens or credits have no value since they either can't buy anything good or the market is so oversaturated by admins spawning things that tokens are rendered worthless. Esseitnally this just leaves the civies are the inbetween stage for rebels or combine, which make up the other 10 percent of players on any given server. RPing with either faction is discouraged by either lore (combine can't be RP'd with positively by design. You can be a faceless cog in their machine that follows the rules or a troublemaker) or server imposed bullshit that comes about because of elitism (lol you wanna hang with the rebels? Stop being such a minge and go away!). Even if you do happen to get anywhere with them you're still treated like dirt when you're new. An RP server that wants to live needs to do away with these problems concerning civilians before anything else. The game has to be fun for the majority of the people on the server, not a skinner box for people hoping to get power. Most (read: all) spend all their fucking time catering to either the rebels or the combine. It sucks.[/QUOTE] Intergrate. The rebels don't live in the slums or in secret hiding holes. Instead, they hide among the loyalists and operate in secret, often without much organization or structure due to fear of getting caught. The conflicts (not combat, entirely unrelated) they would preform would generally be petty and discreet attacks against the city itself. At first glance, there would be absolutely zero difference between the biggest resistance member and the newest citizen. The MPF goes off-duty. Before you interject, I'm going to leave it at this- the current MPF role is devoid of roleplay or character development. Out of uniform roleplay would hopefully guide units towards leading a developed character instead of an emotionless android. Not only will most units look as citizens at first glance, but it enhances the MPF roleplay by enough to radically have changed the server in the first place. We need to open more options to standard citizens and loyalists, though. Intergration to help fight circlejerks is a step forward, but now we need something for plain citizens to actually do. Any ideas?

[QUOTE=Monkah;44273523]Intergrate. The rebels don't live in the slums or in secret hiding holes. Instead, they hide among the loyalists and operate in secret, often without much organization or structure due to fear of getting caught. The conflicts (not combat, entirely unrelated) they would preform would generally be petty and discreet attacks against the city itself. At first glance, there would be absolutely zero difference between the biggest resistance member and the newest citizen. The MPF goes off-duty. Before you interject, I'm going to leave it at this- the current MPF role is devoid of roleplay or character development. Out of uniform roleplay would hopefully guide units towards leading a developed character instead of an emotionless android. Not only will most units look as citizens at first glance, but it enhances the MPF roleplay by enough to radically have changed the server in the first place. We need to open more options to standard citizens and loyalists, though. Intergration to help fight circlejerks is a step forward, but now we need something for plain citizens to actually do. Any ideas?[/QUOTE] Yes, loosen the restrictions on public meetings. Create goals for citizens to push for with tokens/credits. Here's something, tool guns, and attachments must be bought along with the proper license (which can either be applied for or bestowed by an admin). Light melee weapons, such as shovels or wrenches could also be bought with a proper license as they have alternative RP uses. Also people would be restricted to selling only certain types of licenses. Materials for creating contraband could also be bought (but could only be made with the proper facilities and/or tools), creating ways of introducing contraband into the city and allowing for RP opportunities of reporting people to the police. Add more drinks and food to make bars more viable as hangouts. Have admins be able to spawn prewar items that may or may not be useful but are very rare as they otherwise could not be found and spread them across the map on ocassion. Things like prewar books (maybe a D&D player's guide?), zippo lighters, cd players, or functioning microwaves. All sorts of things like that. Give people the tools to make their own RP. They will.

My friend owns a server in which citizens are forced to go through an 'admissions' building upon arrival to the city. The admissions building also doubles as the CWU Headquarters, so there's always a member on desk to take the new arrival and roleplay with them for a bit. This is useful for determining who is a good roleplayer, and who isn't, and can also give the citizens their first bit of interaction. There's also usually an officer on duty to take this new citizen to the apartment buildings and assign them a dorm. You'd be surprised at how much roleplay can be generated from such simple actions.

you can honestly solve most of the problems in HL2RP if you start viewing it as an actual game and applying notions of game design to it rather than trying to throw some rule at the problem and hope your players/admins respect it. the other part of the problems can be solved if people just IM eachother and come to a consensus as opposed to starting drama in LOOC. if you're fighting somebody, for example, IM that person and try to come to a consensus towards the outcome instead of trying hopelessly to win the fight through emotes or random chance. if you're uncomfortable with some RP try to talk things out respectfully through IMs. drama in LOOC and OOC should be heavily discouraged. one of the biggest issues I see with HL2RP, and I mean recently, because I've been recently entering several HL2RP servers, picked at random just to try and analize it a bit better is how draconic some rules really are, and the way that some rules are there to overcome things where the script lack. I saw one server with a shoot to kill area. why would you have a shoot to kill area? why not just place a door there so people can't enter the shoot to kill area if you want them to stay out? why doesn't the ration machine just do /apply for you instead of you manually having to type it out and then press E? why do you even need to do /apply? the civvies in HL2 didn't even do that they just had to wait for hours in the ration line, instead CPs in most servers I've been to just go through the ration line as quick as they can. in terms of RP itself one of the biggest problems I've seen is private RP, where a large amount of players are stuck in an area where nobody else can really access them. that coupled with how big the maps are makes everything feel really empty. the CPs should be patrolling most of the time as opposed to doing roleplay in the Nexus, no matter how high ranked they are. they should be making RP happen. I've seen some servers that apparently ban people from intervening in scenes they just walked on, which is one of the most toxic things you could potentially do for RP. there's no need to encapsulate things so hard, just let it flow.

[QUOTE=doomkiwi;44274008]Yes, loosen the restrictions on public meetings. Create goals for citizens to push for with tokens/credits. Here's something, tool guns, and attachments must be bought along with the proper license (which can either be applied for or bestowed by an admin). Light melee weapons, such as shovels or wrenches could also be bought with a proper license as they have alternative RP uses. Also people would be restricted to selling only certain types of licenses. Materials for creating contraband could also be bought (but could only be made with the proper facilities and/or tools), creating ways of introducing contraband into the city and allowing for RP opportunities of reporting people to the police. Add more drinks and food to make bars more viable as hangouts. Have admins be able to spawn prewar items that may or may not be useful but are very rare as they otherwise could not be found and spread them across the map on ocassion. Things like prewar books (maybe a D&D player's guide?), zippo lighters, cd players, or functioning microwaves. All sorts of things like that. Give people the tools to make their own RP. They will.[/QUOTE] Or you could just roleplay. If you need script items as a visual and to formulate what sort of things you can roleplay, you need to reconsider exactly why you're in a roleplaying community. Tool guns shouldn't be that heavily restricted, and outside of TnB, I've heard some servers even limit physgun and prop spawning to specific users, which is laughable on all accounts. As far as weapons go, melee weapons is something that serves no purpose but to basically induce minge behavior. You're not going to go into any sort of combative scenario with a shovel, and if you even happen to close enough to a gun totting individual, just roleplay the interaction. One might argue that SWEPs in general are therefore unnecessary, but I can see firearms serving the purpose of communicating that a person is firing when they're at such far distances. If tools like wrenches or crowbars are added, they honestly have no place being given any type of damaging effect on another player, since all that leads to is people messing about and knocking each other out. I'm willing to accept it as a visual aid, but even that's a stretch. This leads back to what I said about the economy, and how I can't really see anything being a reasonable addition without seeming somewhat unnecessary. If I want to roleplay having cigarettes and some matches, I'll do so and there's no reason the lack of script items should say I can't. In the same vein, if your character has roleplayed growing drugs or something that isn't in the script, and it's done with reasonable interactions that can be accepted as not something simply being pulled out of thin air, then I fail to see why they need some drug-related script item for it to be fair. These aren't tools so much as unnecessary fluff.

Just gonna get this image out there: [img]http://i.imgur.com/c0CGgeR.png[/img] Now for a very cruel post! I have spent a few years going back and forth on what is wrong with most RP Gamemodes in general, but HL2RP and other "serious roleplays" take a very, very special place in my heart for the amount of community nationalism, drama, and outright stupidity they tend to create by sheer existence. The first thing I'd like to pick bones with is something I mentioned in the image above: It's a game of power tripping sociopaths going about their days masturbating over the fact they can segregate roughly 90% of the population into a group which can do abso-fucking-lutley nothing. That "90%" is our generic citizen class which cannot do anything fun or interesting, and is expected to find enjoyment in getting tortured constantly, get arrested for jay-walking, or get shot during an Autonomous/Judgement Waiver while you are sitting in your house staring at the texture on the wall, hoping that some miracle will befall you and turn you into something more interesting in the server. Oh and virtual sex. Because, you know... Boredom is subtracted by horny teenagers raping every female player they see. This is a problem that stems from a number of things, and most of them come to three main obstacles that no server is willing to deal with, because god forbid if you do, you will be deemed "Mingey" for overcoming them. 1. Remove rules. Outright. Rules and Admins exist in a metagame which breaks immersion, and creates needless boundaries which can be fullfilled with gameplay mechanics. If you can't make gameplay mechanics to deal with certain things, don't make an RP gamemode. You are not roleplaying, you are just creating server hierarchies. 2. Make an economic system in which the players control everything. This may sound odd, but this is a major milestone and issue that every RP Gamemode in Garry's Mod is refusing to address. I'll explain this a bit later in the post, but to sum it up: You cannot expect players to find enjoyment in something they have no control over. 3. No flags, no special permissions. Yes, you can make your little happy Combine government, but never, ever create dedicated rebel teams, dedicated merchants, dedicated pimps and all that... Leave it to the players to design and create their own paths. Now back to the economy thing because, none y'all get the fucking message people keep saying. Good economies can fix about 99% of all problems in RP presently. Think about it like this: The server owner is literally god. They can choose to create a drought which makes it so people have to ration food. They can make shortages of things like tin and copper. This type of thing benefits RP as a whole because players cannot know or expect these types of things, and because of this, RP will have natural flow. So lets step back from the whole discussion of server owner = god, and actually figure out what makes a good economy. The first thing that I tend to look at from my own experiences in servers like Fearless, HL2Land, and some HL2RP servers is that simple commodities like food have a great stepping stone in creating actual economies. If all food has to be planted, harvested, refined, and sent out to players to sell and eat, you create a cycle in which theirs a dynamic system that the [B]players control[/B]. No admin is involved in this cycle, and the only interference could be that of another player's activities in the server. It's called the Butterfly Effect. Natural stems created from natural circumstances. So lets imagine a group of four friends make a store, and in back they have a set-up to farm stuff like mushrooms, cabage, carrots, and the like. These players are able then to take these items, put them on storeshelves, and do meaningful dialogue with other players in order to sell the fruits of their labor for money or other items of value. Now one day, the server owner decides to cause a minor drought. The amount of food yielded from single crops is decreased, and as such, the prices of said food increases. This creates a situation in which an economy is naturally at work. Players require food to live, players sell food based on certain conditions, and so forth. I can imagine that you are saying, "okay so add farming. now what about other issues like rdming and shit?" easy. Make it so everything follows the same system of limited resources, certain conditions made by the server owner, and have a crafting system which takes a decent amount of time to produce certain items. As the current topic is "random death match" something I don't believe in by the way, lets take a look at weapon crafting! In a good economy, you can control how quickly weapons are made via a crafting system, but more importantly, how long it'll take to craft a weapon. So lets say you have a player who harvests all these minerals and ores, and turns them into metal, and begins working on this metal to create a weapon. They can create things like melee weapons, which take significantly less time to craft in comparison to gun, with most of them only requiring four to six parts to craft, or they can take the long route and build a gun. I made a topic on the Rust forum called "Anatomy of the Gun" to describe the amount of time it takes to produce a firearm, I figure no one really gives a damn, so lets take a look at some images: [t]http://7.62x54r.net/MosinID/4332.jpg[/t] This is a Mosin Nagant. Alone that's roughly 26 parts you could force a player to craft in order to make a gun. As you can imagine, that would take some time. If it took you five or six hours to harvest all the materials to make tools, machines, and get resources together to simply build a gun... A gun becomes more then a simple "lol f4 menu open, noaw spawn gun"... It becomes someone's actual time and effort, labor and tears. People would be a lot more respectful with using weapons because losing one gun, would be the loss of roughly five to eight hours of time and effort. Tie in resource depletion, artificial shortages via server owner, and prices of items and materials... People won't be willing to simply kill everyone anymore. Even if they do, you still have your little magical Police force which can wipe them off the damn map in an instant, and therefore destroy all their work. This is why I always suggest an economy before bitching about things. You can't have RP without an economy, it's physically impossible in an FPS game. Maybe in IRC or Forum RP's you could have something where people are controlled by a dungeon master, but that's not enough for RP. I'm sorry if people think I'm being to cocky, but honestly... I have seen the good an economy can do. I have seen men and women who were proclaimed to be "unable to change" to change in an instant and become amazing store clerks who would tell stories about their wares to entice players into purchasing them. When I played on Fearless RP, I helped build one of the greatest player-based economies in the server, and when it crashed, I watched all these amazing RP'ers turn into savage monsters, and watched a ban list which was once dormant, go to ten to twenty bans a day. Please, I am literally begging server owners across Garry's Mod. Let your players control how things work in your servers, make actual economies that give players something to do, while being apart of a bigger picture. It's always worth it in the end.

I agree almost completely. Arbitrary rules like flags and special permissions, even down to "character stats" and non-contextual restrictions like a "bleeding out" system or hunger/thirst, just destroy common roleplay to try and weed out "minges", the big buzzword of the year. When you try to apply forced structure, like "notions of game design", or dedicated "admin rebels/dealers/pimps/etc" to something that really isn't a traditional game at all, you open up a bunch of problems. One of the least of which is that it becomes stagnant and the players have no part in anything, they aren't given any room to improvise. When this is applied to modern servers, players end up having to go through an unreasonable amount of trouble to do anything. However, things like hunger systems, crafting systems, harvesting and absurdly complicated production processes - those all fall under boring, arbitrary, stagnant systems. Same with that guy a few posts up who suggested "weapon degrading" and weapon repair kits, and not just because of the logical reasons like a weapon doesn't just "degrade" over a week, and it's generally just a very poor method to stop guns from flowing everywhere. They're artificial restrictions - they're kind of fixes, but they're not addressing the root problem, just suppressing the symptoms, and like I said in the last thread, it always ends up being a pain in the ass for people later down the line. From my experience, I don't believe that excluding admins entirely from the process is the big solution (although that is a good thing in most areas) - from what I can tell, having everyday players be the only part of the process is important, but having the items behind the money have worth is the biggest issue. It doesn't matter how nice you care for your crops if nobody needs or wants food - so you force people to need food, you add a hunger system. What happens if you ignore it and die from hunger? Do you just respawn, or is it a really big deal like losing items/your character? If the latter then congratulations, it's a pointless boundary - a metagame made to deal with things you couldn't. There's an infinite amount of context that no gameplay mechanic can reasonably prepare for. You do not need a pointlessly complicated and intrusive "harvesting, refining, crafting" system to avoid a server economy or worthless money. I seriously just can't see any part of that working in practice. The biggest cause behind "server hierarchies" dominated by privileged admins and donators, are the admins and donators - not the lack of people spending 12 real-life hours harvesting wood to make a rifle from scratch, which by the mystery of economy equals less minges, abuse and all bad things. [editline]18th March 2014[/editline] And this is all impossible with a normal, public server. If we ever do try to make a Facepunch HL2RP based on all of our experiences with what other servers are doing wrong, it needs to be private. Maybe have specific times when it's open, so the entire whitelist of people aren't thinly spread across a 24/7 period, and only by luck happen to get 30-40% of them there at a "peak" time.

As I said in the other thread and in this one, food items are a script item that have no real need because they [B]don't do anything positive[/B] to the roleplay setting. They're unnecessary, and anything they contribute can simply be done through simple roleplaying. I fail to see what rules are being considered when you say they "break immersion," but again, my only experience with roleplaying in HL2RP is primarily from TnB, where there is a considerable amount of freedom going by what I've heard of other servers. Same with so called flags and special permissions, since none of the flags in TnB give you anything besides the Civil Protection dedicated flags. Character stats are an aspect common among roleplaying scripts in general that can be done away with, and any type of hunger system is invasive and forces players into unnecessary situations. They can roleplay their hunger situation without the need for some arbitrary number that says they're hungry, and if they die simply because they failed to roleplay buying food, that seems just as much a constraint as anything you argued against. Your crafting system doesn't seem to make any sense to me, especially since there's no reason any person who somehow obtain ores or metals, then somehow know how to refine them into a trigger or a spring, therefore leading to culmination of making a firearm. I'm not saying I have an alternative to obtaining weapons organically, nor am I saying the economy shouldn't be player driven, but your system just seems out of place in a roleplay script. I believe I was the one who mentioned the weapon degrading system, and I can elaborate further, since the repair system is the main importance of that idea. The weapons degrading through use isn't meant to stop guns from being exchanged but rather to provide incentive to players to barter or trade commodities to obtain the repair kits, which serve as a money sink. It's an idea someone else came up with that I would have to refer back to, but I did like the concept. That said, there would need to be more, and such a system alone wouldn't do much good.

[QUOTE=FlatPancake;44274414]I believe I was the one who mentioned the weapon degrading system, and I can elaborate further, since the repair system is the main importance of that idea. The weapons degrading through use isn't meant to stop guns from being exchanged but rather to provide incentive to players to barter or trade commodities to obtain the repair kits, which serve as a money sink. It's an idea someone else came up with that I would have to refer back to, but I did like the concept. That said, there would need to be more, and such a system alone wouldn't do much good.[/QUOTE] I don't see why the guns themselves, or just the ammo, can't be the money sink. You've played HL2RP, you know how often people lose guns. They think it's funny to try and see if they can toss it across a rooftop, or they OOCly die and the gun's eaten by a black hole. People ask admins for "refunds" all the time - if you remove that, then they just have to buy more guns and ammo. Then it serves the same purpose. You're not wrong, though. There should be some kind of universally-needed item that players need to barter and trade for, but I don't know how this could be done without making it intrusive and pointless. I just realized the problem with what I just said, is that by making guns and ammo extremely common and widespread, they become worthless and oversaturated. What does person always need more of, other than food?

First the issue of how guns enter the hands of the players would need to be solved, since a city-oriented server doesn't allow much for scavenging for guns themselves. After identifying some natural process for guns to enter the economy, then tiered repair kits and different types of ammunition (surplus, hand loaded, and factory grade) could be used as ways to repair/degrade the weapons at a different rate. If the kits and ammunition are rare, then they themselves can become economy themselves if all three items are kept rare and thus expensive. If there's fewer guns in circulation, then the addition of a new functioning firearm can be priced high. With how rare ammunition would be, they too would require something of value to be traded for, especially if the factory grade ammunition degrades slower than the surplus munitions. Repair kits would be the same, since as your weapon degrades, you'll need to repair it for it properly function, and thus the higher tier repair kits would be more expensive than the lower tier kits. Of course, this really doesn't suit a city-oriented server, since that idea and concept was more involved in a wasteland-like setting. It's late, so I'm running on fumes. Whether or not I was fully awake, I can't rightly identify any sort of script item that could be strongly desired without need to add intrusive mechanics that bog down the script. A commonly cited item are aesthetic goods, like clothing and accessories, but those don't really disappear from the economy once purchased.

[QUOTE=FlatPancake;44274167]Or you could just roleplay. If you need script items as a visual and to formulate what sort of things you can roleplay, you need to reconsider exactly why you're in a roleplaying community. Tool guns shouldn't be that heavily restricted, and outside of TnB, I've heard some servers even limit physgun and prop spawning to specific users, which is laughable on all accounts. As far as weapons go, melee weapons is something that serves no purpose but to basically induce minge behavior. You're not going to go into any sort of combative scenario with a shovel, and if you even happen to close enough to a gun totting individual, just roleplay the interaction. One might argue that SWEPs in general are therefore unnecessary, but I can see firearms serving the purpose of communicating that a person is firing when they're at such far distances. If tools like wrenches or crowbars are added, they honestly have no place being given any type of damaging effect on another player, since all that leads to is people messing about and knocking each other out. I'm willing to accept it as a visual aid, but even that's a stretch. This leads back to what I said about the economy, and how I can't really see anything being a reasonable addition without seeming somewhat unnecessary. If I want to roleplay having cigarettes and some matches, I'll do so and there's no reason the lack of script items should say I can't. In the same vein, if your character has roleplayed growing drugs or something that isn't in the script, and it's done with reasonable interactions that can be accepted as not something simply being pulled out of thin air, then I fail to see why they need some drug-related script item for it to be fair. These aren't tools so much as unnecessary fluff.[/QUOTE] You know what, you're right. Completely right about everything, that's how it should be in an honest player environment with perfect RPing. The problem is people are idiots. Everyone is a fucking idiot, you're an idiot, I'm an idiot, Rex Lee is a mega idiot, and we are fucked if we were to go on the honor system. Why? Because everyone would be tempted to cheat, and while I like to believe that I wouldn't I know that human nature dictates that most of us would, at least on the rare occasions. What RP script items do is they add credibility. Having the item proves that you haven't just pulled it out of your ass, it means someone has to acquire it in game without having some admin okay it every five seconds. It is an alternative to alleviate some of the burdens of admining and enforcing rules. That's what scripts do. There SHOULD be something that says that you don't shit items out of your ass like an easter bunny and jellybeans. If that item is important enough, you should be forced to do something to get them. I've been "mugged" a million times by people saying that they "have a switchblade" that I know they've pulled out of their ass to mug me with. Items are there to prevent that shit. You are right that melee weapons don't need to be sweps though. There's another reason that we're not outside larping with cue-cards and shit written on them. This is a video game, and visualization is part of the fun. If you want to say that we can do RP solely with text and RP then fine, text forums work and we have DnD games on this forum all the time, but we're playing in HL2 RP because the world around us helps visualize it. Items give the illusion that we're in the place as well as help everyone be on the same damn page. Does that mean everything has to have an item for it? No no, certain items shouldn't need one as it's not important that they have models or scripts, but that doesn't mean scripts in general aren't extremely useful.

I'll try to keep this short before going to bed. It's better to give the player trust and show that they are able to do more without consulting for authorizations, than it is to restrict what they do to a limited number of scripted items. It would be more reasonable if the server were a private, whitelisted type of deal, but I would prefer an open, public server personally. Does that mean there is room for poor behavior by troublemakers? Yes, but that's where administrators can get involved in delegating scenarios if the troublemaker is making obvious gestures of powergaming or other misbehavior. Do they need to confront them and run 20 questions as to how they obtained X, Y, or Z? No, but by making their presence noted, the troublemaker is much more likely to behave as he knows he should, and the administrator can monitor them outside this isolated experience to see whether further action should be taken or not. I complained about TnB's playerbase for every year that I was there, but these days, I'm much more willing to give them extended power and freedom, which I think allows for the more levelheaded and serious to enjoy their experience. Any issue of favoritism by administrators then becomes a problem with the administrator more than the player themselves. I did say I'm more willing to accept the presence of firearms, though, since those as a visual [B]aid[/B] can be useful in communicating a multitude of things that I don't think justify the presence of food items and the like.

[QUOTE=FlatPancake;44274590]I'll try to keep this short before going to bed. It's better to give the player trust and show that they are able to do more without consulting for authorizations, than it is to restrict what they do to a limited number of scripted items. It would be more reasonable if the server were a private, whitelisted type of deal, but I would prefer an open, public server personally. Does that mean there is room for poor behavior by troublemakers? Yes, but that's where administrators can get involved in delegating scenarios if the troublemaker is making obvious gestures of powergaming or other misbehavior. Do they need to confront them and run 20 questions as to how they obtained X, Y, or Z? No, but by making their presence noted, the troublemaker is much more likely to behave as he knows he should, and the administrator can monitor them outside this isolated experience to see whether further action should be taken or not. I complained about TnB's playerbase for every year that I was there, but these days, I'm much more willing to give them extended power and freedom, which I think allows for the more levelheaded and serious to enjoy their experience. Any issue of favoritism by administrators then becomes a problem with the administrator more than the player themselves. I did say I'm more willing to accept the presence of firearms, though, since those as a visual [B]aid[/B] can be useful in communicating a multitude of things that I don't think justify the presence of food items and the like.[/QUOTE] You have far far far more faith in humanity than I do because in my experience people will cheat if they get the chance and minge even if they don't have the chance. This includes good RPers and bad RPers alike. Now, don't get me wrong, people can use stuff outside the norm if it doesn't have a model or an item because it would be unfeasable to create an item for everything. I've had good RP simply gathering up the ingredients for random shit (ranging from cookies to bombs), but in that case it's either had good supervision to make sure I don't powergame to high hell or just fluff. In terms of why mundane items should have items? Well incentive to trade. I've gone on servers that had basically forgotten about cigarettes, started smoking them RPly, and then weeks later everybody has some pulled right out of their ass. It should be something that people need to earn. Another reason for items is contraband. Do you know how many times I've found people carrying contraband when they flatout denied having it ooc? So fucking many. It's unreal. Mostly food is there for RP reasons, it doesn't have to fulfill a purpose besides possibly a bit of health, but more often than not when I run a bar it's for RP. People using it for health usually use it to heal the nicks and cuts they get from falling on every day walks around the map or whatever and it serves a bit of a meta purpose in that regard. That being said hunger systems are fucking terrible, don't use them.

Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.