Here’s my two sense about Star Wars RP:
- What is the #1 biggest issue with Star Wars RP servers? / 2. How would you solve it?
I think there are several issues with Star Wars RP as it stands right now. I’ll discuss Star Wars RP in general as some servers may be exceptions to what I say below. Just assume I joined a generic Star Wars RP server that my good friend ~Tom~ made.
a. I think the biggest issue is what was mentioned above: it gets repetitive fast. When I use to play SWRP a lot, a lot of the times there was nothing to do but run around the ship in circles. Most SWRP servers are so “bare bones”, content wise, that it can sometimes be very hard to successfully RP.
b. Training events. Training events on larger servers (30+) seem almost like a waste of time. From the admin perspective, you have to build a cool course for people to navigate that doesn’t seem like the course you built yesterday. This can take 1+ hours to build. From the user perspective because there’s 30 people online and 4 people to a group so 7 groups you have to wait 30 minutes+ to run the course but the course itself only takes about 4-5 minutes to complete. So from a user perspective, they have to wait 2 hours for the course to be built plus a minimum of 30 minutes in line to get 5 minutes of actual gameplay.
c. Event events. The number 1 issue with event events is structure and planning. If there are 40 people online and you only have 1-2 game masters, it’s really really hard to run the event. Keeping everyone happy and waiting in small lines for 20 minutes while everyone spawns in is a nightmare. Once the event gets on its way, a lot of the time for the majority of people, it just seems to devolve into chaos. Squad leaders aren’t sure where they should be going, who they are suppose to be killing, you have random CTs scattered throughout the map doing who knows what and if the DM is marginally okay (say 6/10) the event will most likely be “muh” for the majority of the players who took part. There needs to be a way before hand and as it starts for everyone to know where they are suppose to be and what exactly they should be doing at that instance. It also needs to be equally divided - every event should take advantage of each squad: the medics, etc.
d. Training recruits. On just about every server this is the weakest link of the chain. Probably about 1/4-1/2 of the recruits who join will have already played SWRP enough that training just wastes their time. Also, having to call and wait for a trainer can really demotivate people and drive them away. Trainers may also be inconsistent, hard to hear because of other recruits / trainers or none all. Training is always the same so there needs to be an automated system to do so. As well as an automated system to promote people.
e. Special events on the ship. Something that I wish SWRP servers had were random events on the ship itself. The ship needs to feel alive. At any moment every 20 minutes, something may happen like a water line bursts and there needs to be troopers to go fix it, a small ship is attacking, the ship needs refueling, a shipment has arrived.
f. Squadron training. This is where I think almost all SWRP servers fail. They don’t really spend too much time ‘training’ their squad. I think this is probably due more that it’s kinda hard to define ‘training’ and sometimes it can be pretty boring. “Lets work on walking in formations” “Lets get some exercise by jogging around the ship”. Along with this is squadron promotion. Very few servers have it but there definitely needs to be a requirements system in place for promotions that are tracked. So for instance, if you want to be promoted to Sargent, you need to have done 5 main events, killed 100 enemies and played on the server for 20 days. Most servers it’s all done by “Man, Joe has really been playing on the server a lot. Should we promote him?””ohh idk Frank, didn’t he just get promoted yesterday?”. This also helps with people who actually care about ranks and want to know what they need to do to move up in the world. Telling people “You get promoted on a whim. Deal with it” isn’t very motivating.
g. 1,000 paid generic addons. I don’t think this bothers most people but it really bothers me. I constantly browse the gmod store and other DarkRP / SWRP servers and I can tell when you’re using a paid addon most of the time. If my friend Dave starts a SWRP server and asks me to join and it’s literally just DarkRP with 20 paid addons I already know that the server is going to die. It’s not going to be original and there are already tons of servers that are DarkRP with 20 paid addons, and they have something he doesn’t: players.
h. The Job system. I think this bothers me the most and it’s a result of people using DarkRP as the base. You shouldn’t have to select that you’re a clone trooper (or what ever rank you are) every time you join.
- What is the best thing (if you think there’s any good thing) about Star Wars RP?
Personally the thing I like the best about SWRP are the events. If you somehow have an event that’s actually is a 8/10 or better, it’s actually really fun. The feeling that multiple teams came together to accomplish a goal in the Star Wars universe is cool.
- Notes
I’m just going to throw out there, not to discourage you, but starting a SWRP server in this day is actually really hard unless you have quite a lot of friends and they are willing to play on the server. You also really need to have some one who knows how to set up SWRP servers. There are a lot of things you have to consider and edit or else you’ll end up with a lot of minges and a bad experience. One example is making sure recruits / CTs can’t spawn props. Another thing is finding a good host for SWRP. Turns out it’s a little intensive to run once you add in all of your addons and have 30+ players. You may end up spending $30-50 a month on a server that can reliable support the player base and defend against attacks (like DDoSes).
Best of luck m8!
