How would you improve "roleplay" gamemodes? - Garry's Mod

Hi! In a similar light to Garry's "How to make gamemodes better", I've been messing around on roleplay server recently mostly to see what the hype is all about and I've been wondering.. besides being filled with kids (which is inevitable on Garry's Mod), how would you improve roleplay gamemodes? Please keep clear the distinction between "serious roleplay" like Taco N Banana and whichever other places where they actually roleplay characters with stories and whatnot as opposed to "light roleplay/RPG" where you get a job, go around spawning money printers, make gangs on the spot, etc. In either case, how would you improve the gamemodes? What is it you don't like, for instance, about DarkRP? Thanks!

You can't, sorry. The community is unable. Forget about serious roleplay lol, the only thing people want to play now are gamemodes like perp and gang wars. The only serious rp communities are the old big ones, and their large playerbase is the [b]only[/b] thing keeping them alive. And if it isn't a large community, it's openaura.

Kill it, take it off its misery.

There could still be an attempt to revive GMod RP. With the right group of people we could possibly see a 'reform' of sorts. Actual RP is still fun, while semi-serious can be fun too.

Garry's Mod roleplay is too popular for its own good. The problem is with the users, not the gamemode.

Yes, the GMod RP community consists of mostly stupid people that are too afraid to try something new. But it is possible to revive it. I currently play on a server that gets 10-15 players daily. It's nothing big, but it's fun. It has its own custom story and everything. What I mean by this is that GMod RP isn't dead, you just gotta find the right server.

I hate what happened to the PERP gamemode. The first version was good, but now we have shit like PERP5.4X+ It seems like the idea of role-playing was forgotten, that it didn't require much besides friends who wanted to have fun.

innovation, trying new things

The best roleplay is on Sandbox.

To be honest, I loved PERP 1 as I loved SEOW. I want a RP gamemode that isn't too "closed-around", and as open as possible. As long as staff members are on as much as possible, it'll turn out well.

[QUOTE=Jocken300;35283512]Yes, the GMod RP community consists of mostly stupid people that are too afraid to try something new. But it is possible to revive it. I currently play on a server that gets 10-15 players daily. It's nothing big, but it's fun. It has its own custom story and everything. What I mean by this is that GMod RP isn't dead, you just gotta find the right server.[/QUOTE] What makes it fun as opposed to X or Y DarkRP server?

[QUOTE=MisterTickles;35298348]What makes it fun as opposed to X or Y DarkRP server?[/QUOTE] The people. The people that play on the server are all good roleplayers, and we all communicate well and have fun with each other.

[QUOTE=supersnail11;35285401]The best roleplay is on Sandbox.[/QUOTE] Admin-driven storylines are the best. I remember running a War of the Servers RP, with the denizens of the server fighting off the mingepod invasion in our own fleet of airboat planes. Shit was pretty damn cash.

[QUOTE=Jocken300;35302532]The people. The people that play on the server are all good roleplayers, and we all communicate well and have fun with each other.[/QUOTE] That, and this : sniplol

As for DarkRP, I have a few suggestions on how to fix it. Like people have said it's the community that makes most RP gamemodes awful, and I think what needs to be done is to force players to play their roles the way they should. I don't think a motd or simple rules is enough to make players do what they should, the game mechanics themselves need to pressure and encourage people into doing what they should. [B]1. Remove Moneyprinters.[/B] Moneyprinters is an easy and unrealistic way to earn money. DarkRP revolves around making money from moneyprinters, either by buying one and keeping it secret as a civilian, stealing other peoples moneyprinters and then protecting them with force as a criminal, or stealing other peoples moneyprinters and then protecting them with force as civil protection and the mayor. Moneyprinters does not encourage people to play their classes the way they should or in a way that is even that much fun, because it's an overly easy means of making money that can be used by every class. They're not even that common in real life. (See 5. for an alternative to removing them) [B]2. Remove the mobster class and merge it with civilians.[/B] The mobster class is an unnecessary and unrealistic class. Criminals are not criminals as a legit profession, they do not wear a work uniform, and they can not be demoted. Criminals are civilians that do things against the law. Remove the mobster class, and instead allow civilians to choose to make an honest living, or be a criminal disguised as a civilian making an honest living. This will allow players a lot more freedom as civilians, they can choose to live lawfully and rely on the civil protection and mayor to keep them safe, or they can choose to do criminal things and avoid attention by the civil protection. This makes it so every player is a possible criminal, or a possible civilian earning a honest living. [B]3. Make civil protection and the mayor unable to vote.[/B] Usually if the civil protection or the mayor isn't doing their jobs, are harassing/killing/arresting civilians for personal or other dumb reasons, are stealing peoples illegal items such as drugs/guns/moneyprinters to store and protect in the PD to use for themselves... they are still often hard to demote. They're hard to demote, because they work as a gang, and when one of their members gets put up for demotion they vote against it. The best way to prevent the mayor and the civil protection from abusing their power, is by making it easier for civilians to get rid of them if they are not doing their job properly. This will highly prevent corrupt politicians and police forces, because openly doing illegal things or abusing their power, will make it very likely for them to be demoted. They will be forced to act legal and use their authority to fight criminals, because if they bully players or don't do their job properly they run a high risk of being demoted. [B]4. Add a postal worker profession, that handles peoples shipments.[/B] It is not realistic and it is not good for the gameplay itself that when players order drugs/weapons/moneyprinters/food, it just instantly appears right in front of them. Add a postal office where all shipments are delivered to, where they can either be picked up by the person who ordered it, or delivered by a postal worker. To prevent abuse the packages should not say what they contain, they should only say who the package is for, and if they should be delivered or the player or if the player will come to pick it up themselves. Only postal workers and civil protection should be able to see the name of the recipient, and if the player wants their package delivered they will have to pay slightly extra and a marker that only the postal worker can see while holding their package will be placed where they made the order. A system like this will prevent Gundealers from working as walking armories for the highest bidder, they won't be able to instantly order gun shipments right in front of them, instead they will be forced to either pick them up from the post office or to wait for them to be delivered. This, and food, drugs, and moneyprinters can no longer spawned instantly in the safety of your own home. This profession will not only add a lot of balance to DarkRP, but it will also be a very unique profession that actually requires that you do a lot of work either by handing the right packages over in the post office or by delivering the packages. [B]5. If you keep moneyprinters, make them significantly less convenient.[/B] Perhaps make moneyprinters significantly larger than they are right now, consisting of several parts that you have to order and assemble. Make the final product something that only works when all the parts are put together, and that you can't just run around with in front of your gravity gun. Moneyprinters should not be as convenient as they are right now, if you want to get one you will have to get all the parts and find a place where you can assemble all the pieces, if you want to move/steal it you will have to disassemble and move it piece by piece and reassemble it.

I used to play on an RP server that was extremely fun, I'll try remember a few things [B]1. Good admins[/B] No 10 year old server owners who ban anyone who has the job they like, seems simple enough [B] 2. Uncomplicated gamemode[/B] No 5 hour signup process, no character creation, no spreadsheets of stats. You read the MOTD and you get dropped in as a civillian, then you go do whatever. On some servers I've joined, you can get in, walk out into the street and have no clue what to do because everyone is off in their own closed RP with nobody willing to help out. [B]3. No restrictions on classes or gameplay[/B] There's no "designated Combines" or "rebel signup". Everyone just does whatever they want and builds their own story. If the map changes, whoever used to be the Mayor might be an arms dealer or a hired goon now. One time the Mayor made a law saying that arms dealing became illegal, but I still sold weapons. I just secretly kept caches of weapons that I would deliver to individual people. [B]4. No excessive downloads[/B] A good RP server doesn't have a 10gb model pack filled with fakefactory models and custom models that only admins are allowed to have. The only thing to download was a few megs of scripts and icons for the gamemode. The main problem is all of this means nothing if you don't have good players

I think it would be a good idea to make the majority of the classes in DarkRP not use a specific player model and a class slot. The mayor and civil protection are the only classes that really should have a specific class slot and player model. They should be easily distinguishable, since they are authority figures. Regular unemployed civilians, gundealers, chefs, criminals, postal workers, mobbosses, thieves, doctors, and hitmen should all be able to choose from a wide range of the same player models to look however they feel like. Everything that looks like a normal human being (not the combine/zombie/corpse models). It would also be a good thing if your playermodel becomes unavailable to other players once you have picked it. This makes it so that none of these professions can be distinguished by simply looking at their player model, but every civilian has a unique appearance that makes them possible to recognize from a distance.[sp]Hobos could still choose both between the civilian outfits and the corpse model, just for shits and giggles.[/sp] The class slots would be like this: Mayor Civil Protection Civilian As the first Civil Protection, you can choose to become Chief of protection and you'll receive the chief player model. When you choose Civilian, you have to answer two professions, then you choose your player model. Firstly your legal work, that will be shown in your description. Secondly, your criminal profession, that will only be known by you. Legal professions that have a limited amount of slots and gives you new salaries, and privileges to order wares only available to that class, are professions like doctor, chef, postal worker, gundealer, unemployed, and homeless. As unemployed or homeless, you can also use /job to set a custom job description. Criminal professions also has limited slots and privileges depending on what you chose, such as mobboss, mobster, drugdealer, (thief and hitman depending on server), however your criminal profession does not have any salary. Your criminal profession will by default be "lawful" unless you choose one of the other professions. This means you can run two professions at the same time. You can be a doctor and a drug dealer, you can be a chef and a mobboss, you can be a postal worker and a mobster. You could also be unemployed and a drugdealer, or a hobo and lawful. It makes it so that nobody can just look at your job description and know for sure if you're likely to be a criminal or not, the civil protection will have to be suspicious of everyone. You, will also have to be suspicious of everyone. [editline]29th March 2012[/editline] Then again, I know many of these suggestions would take a shitload of effort and coding. I really wish I had knowledge in coding, mapping, and modeling so I wouldn't always have to be the ideas guy... it's a shame I have such a terrible learning disability.

how about you all stop trying to change everyone's view on roleplay, roleplay is something you'd 'theme' yourself, no? you are all trying set some standard or whatever, go make your own server with your thing if you want it so bad

[QUOTE=_Chewgum;35343419]how about you all stop trying to change everyone's view on roleplay, roleplay is something you'd 'theme' yourself, no? you are all trying set some standard or whatever, go make your own server with your thing if you want it so bad[/QUOTE] The thing is, RP can't just be whatever you want it to be. You can't treat GMod RP like it's different from any other type of RP, because it shouldn't be. It should follow the same standards and rules. The difference is how seriously you take it. Some people like to take their roleplay more seriously than others, which is why the RP community is divided into so called "Light RP" and "Serious RP" servers.

[QUOTE=_Chewgum;35343419]how about you all stop trying to change everyone's view on roleplay, roleplay is something you'd 'theme' yourself, no? you are all trying set some standard or whatever, go make your own server with your thing if you want it so bad[/QUOTE] The thing is though, this is exactly why most RP in gmod sucks right now. There's tons of servers with cheaply made copies of the same gamemode with minor customizations, and they're all still full of people not doing what they're supposed to be doing alongside a bunch of rules that neither makes the game more fun nor makes people do what they're supposed to be doing. Even if they did do what they were supposed to be doing, they would not have a lot of fun since not a lot of people around them rely on them doing what they're supposed to be doing anyway. People need to be encouraged, and downright forced by the gamemodes mechanics itself, to do what they're supposed to be doing. There needs to be some purpose to the things you do, people need to rely on you doing your job, and you need to feel that there is consequences to not doing your job. If we get that, we can get a gamemode where people are naturally doing what they're supposed to be doing, while surprisingly still having fun.

[QUOTE=Simski;35345933]downright forced by the gamemodes mechanics itself[/QUOTE] There is not better way to reply to this than with this one simple word, [b]no[/b].

[QUOTE=elowin;35346174]There is not better way to reply to this than with this one simple word, [b]no[/b].[/QUOTE] Too much freedom just means people won't know what the hell they're supposed to be doing, if I want to roleplay without restrictions to my abilities I'll just join a build server. Rules in RP gamemodes do not work well, they are not immersive, and they are not fun. Game mechanics should encourage the player to play the way they should, and by using the game mechanics to force them to do their job I mean making their job actually useful to other players when done right and noticeable in game consequences when done wrong. People shouldn't follow the game rules because they're supposed to, but because it benefits themselves and other players.

Haven't you guys considered that there may be nothing to improve since there isn't any actual gameplay to begin with? In most servers you're given rules on what NOT to do, you can do otherwise whatever you want in RP.

[QUOTE=Big Bang;35348080]Haven't you guys considered that there may be nothing to improve since there isn't any actual gameplay to begin with? In most servers you're given rules on what NOT to do, you can do otherwise whatever you want in RP.[/QUOTE] if you think there's nothing to improve you've never played on DarkRP

Remove weapons and drugs in their entirety.

[QUOTE=Instant Mix;35348531]Remove weapons and drugs in their entirety.[/QUOTE] That solves nothing. Remember that gamemode a few years back called GmodRP? It had no guns and no drugs. Yet people still managed to minge.

imo gmod 13 will most likely revive gmod rp, but for now serious gmod rp is inevitably dead.

[QUOTE=Psycho8x8;35348782]imo gmod 13 will most likely revive gmod rp, but for now serious gmod rp is inevitably dead.[/QUOTE] Why would it revive it? Same players, same gamemodes.

[QUOTE=supersnail11;35348834]Why would it revive it? Same players, same gamemodes.[/QUOTE] why would you remove guns and things the players love most about the gamemode, you seem to want to force some roleplay concept on something that is completely different.

[QUOTE=_Chewgum;35348864]why would you remove guns and things the players love most about the gamemode, you seem to want to force some roleplay concept on something that is completely different.[/QUOTE] what? when did i say that [editline]29th March 2012[/editline] i'm saying that guns != bad roleplaying, but guns != good roleplaying.