Botulism
Really Corrupt
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2023
- Messages
- 435
- Thread Author
- #1
BOTULISM'S GUIDELINES FOR:
HOW TO MAKE AN ALREADY SUCCESSFUL AND FUNCTIONING HL2RP SERVER EVEN BETTER, STAND OUT WAY MORE, AND POTENTIALLY NOT LOSE ITS' WAY AFTER PLAYER EXHAUSTION, BOREDOM, ETC.
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LONG INTRODUCTION
Willards right now is already doing pretty well, but what keeps people coming back? The stellar roleplay opportunities? The amazing events? The pure engagement with the players? Right now, I'd believe all these things are at all-time lows.
HOWEVER...That's not just a Willards problem, but it's a problem with 98% of HL2RP servers.
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It's a problem no-one is willing to tackle because FEW want to risk tackling it. They think if they suddenly change the game and make things more engaging, they'll lose their whole player base because a few beloved characters got killed off or things just didn't feel the way they 'used to.' I'm here to write a relatively easy to read list of suggestions and bullet-points that anyone can get into and understand, and hopefully all of these suggestions are implemented or seen as viable for a future rendition of Willards.
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Willards has the players that are willing to be creative, it has the NUMBERS. We have seventy people on every day, yet I see that there's a real lack of boundary-pushing and engagement with such a large cast. It's as if you had a movie where 90% of the bodies were just extras talking and chatting in the background. That's not how a HL2RP server should ideally be. The dystopia should be real, it should be in your face, and players should be active, involved, and constantly engaged and interested by an expansive world.
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People tell me that my main problem is with the players, not the game. It's not their fault that players like myself and others have been lacking behind in roleplay opportunities, it's the simple lack of the environment pushing many people to engage their characters properly. Thus, I'm not blaming the players here, but the lack of incentive to totally and completely engage with the game environment itself. It's as simple as not making cops just stand around 90% of the time, or giving loyalists rallies to do and speeches to give. Shit like that.
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A HL2RP server should constantly engage from the moment you enter it. It should be regimented (ICly) with a constant desire to escape and to feel freedom. Making a HL2RP server more hardcore isn't just about making the cops act more like tyrants, it's about instilling a system of regimen, hierarchy, and brutality that is BELIEVABLE as a dystopia. I want to have my citizen constantly brood about running away from the cops, I wanna hide in the slums to evade constant apartment sweeps, I wanna re-enact the first few chapters of Half Life Two...
I wanna write a human being that lives DECADES in a few OOC weeks. I CAN do that right now, but with the current environment, I want to see TONS of others be able to do the same. To feel the same creative sparks, and to be INSPIRED by the environment their character sets foot in. I want to be ENGAGED, I want to be constantly pushed, I want to feel constant human interaction every time I join in the server. I want EVERYONE to band together and help me make this happen!
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And here are a few suggestions, organized in bullet-points, that I hope will better help me and many others achieve that. Enjoy, thank you!
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For an introduction (And I've told several players about this) as to why I'm so interested in this subject, my grandfather was born in Greece in 1943, leaving the country for the United States in 1961. He was a child during the Greek Civil War and survived almost being massacred with his whole family by Communist Guerilla forces in the village of Polykarpi. He isn't some huge anti-communist either, because immediately after the end of the Civil War, a wave of government-led anti-Communist terror spread through Greece.
If your neighbor told the police that you were a Communist, they'd come to your house, put you down on your knees in your backyard, shoot you, and leave you there for your family to clean up. This is why my grandpa left the country when he became an adult.
A single Communist Captain on horseback is the reason for why I'm alive today. He stopped the massacre, and I think about that atleast once a month. It's funny how your actions could result in life in a completely different part of Earth decades later.
His father got jailed for 8 months just because he was drunk and joked at a bar that he wiped his ass with the Greek flag. His father was a MILITARY VETERAN who served in both World War Two and the Greek Civil War, yet they still threw him in the fucking trash. He would've just stayed in his cell were the warden not a family friend, pulling some strings to get him out. His cousins were not so lucky, one cousin got imprisoned for being a Communist and was held from the age of eighteen until he was thirty-six, when the Junta collapsed in 1974 and all the prisoners were set free.
This was NOT a stereotypical dystopia. This was not Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. This was just a nation of people very paranoid of having to fight a gruesome civil war again. You may think that kind of environment wouldn't provide roleplay opportunities, but from the amount of amazing stories my grandpa has about such a time, I think it did. Even in a horrid time, he still managed to find happiness, humanity, and meaning.
I genuinely think a lot of Willard players don't know what true terror and oppression looks like. I encourage you all to watch Schindler's List or Come And See, it'll help you pop your cherry a bit.
CITY ROLEPLAY MUST AND SHOULD CHANGE
THE PRIORITIZATION OF REGIMEN
APARTMENTS, CURFEWS, FORCED LABOR, AND THE CONSTANT NEED TO ESCAPE AND FEEL FREEDOM FROM AN OPPRESSIVE REGIME
BULLET-POINTS WILL BE COLOR CODED BASED ON THEIR RELEVANCE TO EACH FACTION. I WILL CONTINUE WITH FURTHER SECTIONS DEVOTED TO EACH FACTION SPECIFICALLY.
THIS IS NOT A LIST OF WHAT WE'RE ALL DOING WRONG, OR RIGHT, ETC. Just what I as a role-player wish to see improved upon as a whole.
I'm not an idiot who has a bias toward any faction, I'm a relative newcomer and outsider who has been playing for a few months. My experience stems from playing as both a slummer/rebel and a Civil Protection Officer, along with a few days of Biotic RP.
I know that even with this disclaimer some players will get defensive, but I welcome it and expect it. OPEN THE GATES!
- THE COMBINE is a MACHINE. Right now, it does not feel like a machine. The appearance is there but not the mechanical parts. This must change in several ways.
- LITTLE EFFORT is maintained in keeping citizens orderly and unified as a group. The OOC desire for roleplay freedom has seeped into an IC desire to not encroach on characters, to not bother them, to not start and begin roleplay situations. People are more focused on doing their own thing as opposed to bringing things to other people. This is a bad mindset, and we must encourage the opposite.
- Where are the apartment managers? Where are the curfews? Where are the constant calls for mandatory work shifts to rebuild sections of the city road, construct new things, burn dead bodies, etc. And with harsh punishments for refusing such acts? Why is it all optional?
- Why does the universe ASK me to participate instead of constantly forcing me? That's not what a dystopian universe should feel like. A dystopian world forces my character to participate whether they want to or not. Some would argue that this gives no time for rebellion, but I disagree. Rebel in the fucking factory, stab your local cop to death and flee. That's how your grand-pappy used to make friends and enemies.
- Why is roleplay not prioritized around these things? The Combine would realistically allow a lot of citizens to be vagrants, this is true, but vagrancy does NOT encourage roleplay. Forcing people into houses together and locking them up for a mandatory curfew DOES. People start to talk, people start to CARE. People start to form relationships and people plan uprisings and riots that'll shake the whole city.
- IT ALSO MAKES SWEEPS MAKE SENSE. If I'm stuck in my apartment and the cops start clearing everyone out, I feel a LOT more trapped than normal.
- AS A WHOLE, City Roleplay should have a defined loop that prioritizes getting to know characters, being put in stressful, hostile situations, and either surviving and falling into a few categories. Resistance, Loyalist, Citizen, Civil Worker, Civil Protection Officer, Slummer, etc.
- Right now? You're not forced to do much of anything. From the moment you join the game as both a CITIZEN and a COP, it's almost basically free roam with little consequences for both factions. As a cop, I can theoretically just go and walk to the slums and start doing shit on my lonesome if I wanted to. I have no quota looming over my head or any obligation besides my OOC desire to play the faction how its' played.
- As a citizen, I can do much of the same. The moment Johnny Bluesuit spawns in, he can run straight into the sewers on the map, clean through piles of trash, and start to become acquainted with high-tier rebels within his first hour of play. What kind of dystopia is that? That isn't Half Life 2, that's just Dark RP without voice chat.
- I want obligation, coercion, and I want to see characters under pressure rather than OOC people under pressure.
- The SLUMS and SEWERS should NOT be readily accessible from the moment I join the game. The slums should be a bit easy to sneak into but not completely inaccessible, with not enough people in the city being deemed a 'Miscount' type scenario, warranting a sweep.
- The SEWERS should only be inhabited by the most hardcore of rebels. Deadly gas should be pumped down there to deter anyone fleeing from the City without proper protection.
- As a whole, roleplay MUST focus and REMAIN focused within the city and slums. When you have seventy players, the game feels a LOT more populated when all seventy people are in the above-ground sections. When you have thirds in the city, slums, and sewers each, it can feel unpopulated, and roleplay becomes harder to find.
- Trying to do everything at once instead of perfecting one thing can make everything feel bland and uninspired instead of making one thing feel amazing and effort-filled. Willard has AMAZING developers who make great GUI, scripts, and mechanical details, but it lags behind with engaging players to interact and control the world they have created. Instead of trying to be half Outlands RP and City RP, just focus on the City. There's so much to do there that hasn't been done before, or hasn't been perfected.
- YES, I'm saying 95% of all Resistance characters should be above-ground. Resisting against the Combine isn't about farming scripts and living in the sewers save for expeditions and occasional attacks, it's about trying to actively take out the city from within. Subterfuge, no brute force until the knife is to the Combines' throat.
- Resistance is not just done by killing cops and shooting cumbean. It's done by graffitiing walls and spreading the word, it's done by secretly passing out supplies to citizens in need, it's done by just having a radio and keeping watch on Civil Protection Officers' movements so your buddies who are planning an ambush know where they are and how many of them are out there. Resistance is done by assassinating key targets and keys to power in the City so when the Uprising happens, the machine is WEAKENED...I could go on and on.
- THERE ARE SO MANY OPPORTUNITIES and GOOD methods of roleplay for resistance characters, but the current resistance meta consists of grinding trash for an OOC month, sucking up to a Black Market Dealer, joining a rebel group, befriending the leader on discord, and working your way up to getting a long-time rebel character through sheer playtime alone. THIS does NOT encourage good roleplay. This does NOT encourage someone to improve. This encourages someone's writing abilities and immersion to STAGNATE. This is why I've yet to seriously try a run-of-the-mill rebel character. I see no real roleplay in that. It's boring to me.
- Civil Protection should ideally be IC AND OOC APPLICATIONS. Infiltration within Civil Protection shouldn't be just a pipedream organized by a Civil Protection Character writing a char-auth, it should be a natural IC process that should be prioritized for resistance characters. Look at Barney in HL2, resistance plants would be fucking HUGE and a GREAT HELP for any upcoming resistance cell.
- When you do solely OOC applications, you miss out on so many good and interesting roleplay opportunities. Imagine meeting a citizen and realizing he's a cop later as he's beating your ass? Imagine how much of a mind-fuck that'd be. Along with bullet-point #18, roleplay skill SHOULD be prioritized over how many pictures and spicy font changes/colors you can put in (Or how buddy-buddy you are with the faction leads.)
- NPC-Centric events (Antlion shooting sprees, for instance) should be HEAVILY decreased in scale or forgotten about almost entirely. The only NPC-centric event I could see working and having an interesting effect on roleplay could be a headcrab/zombie outbreak in the City itself or something like that.
- Weapons as a whole should largely be downgraded in terms of what you FIND. Cops shouldn't have to deal with rebels who have stockpiles of AR2s and AKs. Rebels shouldn't have to deal with Overwatch every time they so much as cut the cheese in a semi-public place. A pulse-rifle should be as rare as a Mormon gay bar, and rifles and similar weapons should be sparingly seen, only being used by Conscripts, high-end rebels and Overwatch personnel.
- Pistols, sub-machine guns, and melee weapons should be the weapons of the working-class heroes of the City. Riots shouldn't be easily put down by a few Intention One cops armed with automatic weapons. Pistols should be costly and only delivered to cops who perform well, and sub-machine guns and shotguns (or their ammo) should only be given out on special missions (Think of the HL2 Canals chapter, for instance.)
- AT THE SAME TIME, weapons should do much higher and more lethal amounts of damage than regular HL2 weapons. I shouldn't have to unload 8+ bullets on someone just to kill them. Firearms are a deadly and lethal tool, and even if someone's downed by gunshots, they shouldn't be able to get back up again after someone applies two makeshift bandages to them and does a shitty MedRP paragraph.
- With this and the aforementioned points, one can cultivate an environment where resistance in the city is actually feasible and rewarding if done right. Citizens and cops should constantly be forced to interact with people, new and old, by the ENVIRONMENT ITSELF. One should always be a few steps away from death, and death as a whole should be common and expected for GOOD characters. One shouldn't always be impressed by a character that's lasted a long time, because in some cases that just means they haven't taken any real chances. Death is a reward, death is a punishment, and death is the only certain thing in HL2RP. Embrace the PK.
- To CONCLUDE my City Roleplay bullet-points, HL2RP in this format should be focused ON the City. If we're going to improve and if this server really wants to create some good memories, some drastic changes ought to be made in the name of creativity, making a new slate, and creating a good, old-school experience that can inspire and create as MUCH roleplay as it possibly can. The slate should be wiped clean, tons of old concepts, characters, and other things SHOULD be done away with, and I'm not afraid to say it as a relative newcomer to Willards. Every good server does a wipe once in a while to keep things fresh, I'd know, I've been lurking on this schema for a long time. I'm going to continue with the Combine end of the spectrum, talking about CiviPro and Loyalists.
COMBINE ROLEPLAY CAN BE IMPROVED, BIG-TIME.
THE PRIORITIZATION OF TYRANNY, CORRUPTION, AND AN ALIEN FORM OF HUMANITY THAT IS UNLIKE ANYTHING SEEN IN DEVELOPED COUNTRIES.
IM THE HARSHEST ON THE FACTION I LIKE MAINING. BE WARNED.
I totally didn't purposefully choose art from a Russian artist just for this point.
- BEATING QUOTAS. If cops aren't going to actively roleplay being the antagonists on their own, you're going to have to force them by design. Every cop needs a personal beating quota, and he needs a way to tally it and mark it with some level of proof. This can also serve as a way to see which Civil Protection Member is active or not. Failure to re-educate enough citizens will result firstly in sterilized credit decreases, to blackmarks and eventually de-servicement if the Unit is just shown to have zero backbone whatsoever.
- Tyranny should be portrayed realistically, not in a silly or immature way that can make them a laughing stock to citizen players. Civil Protection Officers are not high school bullies making citizens recite riddles and beating them for failing, they're a race of cruel sadists, cynics, and opportunists whose only job is to beat people, enforce codes, and keep production high while rooting out any malignancies in the system with extreme prejudice.
- Civil Protection Officers are expected to have a degree of roleplay freedom, but the freedom to roleplay whatever character you want should be monitored. Characters that fit the theme of Civil Protection should be encouraged while characters that do not should be washed out. If you're playing a stupid kid who just joined for the rations or a character that actively works to decrease immersion, you shouldn't expect to last long.
- CIVIL PROTECTION Are not even Nazis, they're WORSE than NAZIS. The nazis in this universe are the Combine itself, the CIVIL PROTECTION are COLLABORATORS. They are scum of the Earth and should be played as such. If you play CiviPro and you want to positively humanize them and show that they can be good people (they should always be humanized, humanizing someone doesn't mean they're good or bad, they're HUMAN OPPRESSORS), you should do it in a dignified and classy way while knowing your character is a life extinguisher who most likely shares more in common with Kommandant Amon Goeth or Pol Pot than a normal human being.
- Civil Protection Officers are Not Police Officers. They are not supposed to be good people and they are not supposed to protect and serve citizens. They protect the Combine system of society, and only engage with citizens on a conversational level when it's either advantageous to them or advantageous to the system.
- They don't assign people houses out of wanting to find someone a home, they assign them a house because that makes citizens easier to locate, profile, and organize.
- Weapons should be limited. Intention Fives and Recruits should have stun-batons (which should come for free) but pistols and anything higher should be rewards and should be distributed based on activity, ferocity, and duty. Sub-machine guns and shotguns should only be held by units during an emergency or a canal sweep, with Command Units being given a heavier pistol substitute when inside the city.
- Corruption, unless it hurts the system, should be outright ignored and encouraged. Fines, protection fees and rackets, taking bribes in some cases, fraternizing with criminals, and other such things should all be A-Okay as long as they're to better the standing of Civil Protection members and they help them survive while performing their tasks. It should only be disciplined by the Rank Leaders if it begins to aid the resistance directly.
- In general, Civil Protection Players should be encouraged to dedicating as much of their time to keeping order as possible. Cops shouldn't be obnoxiously obstructive, but they should constantly be doing sweeps, searches, inspections, loyalty checks, beatings, roundings up, workshifts, forced labor scenarios, and anything else they can think of in order to engage citizens in interesting roleplay. A roleplay loop of assigning apartments, sweeping them, and curfew in-between workshifts would do wonders, alongside just rounding up random citizens when they're on the streets during curfew and throwing them indoors.
- Torture and interrogation shouldn't just be for rebels. It is for the innocent too, and possibly even at 'random' times. If you're acting suspicious and you seem odd, you're bound to get tortured and interrogated for resistance connections. This shouldn't feel like these cops have an OOC chain around their necks, this should feel like Stalinist Russia during the Great Purge. I want a real reason to rebel, and I want a real reason to kill every cop that I see once the Uprising begins. I want to play the antagonist and I also want a worthy antagonist to go up against.
- OVERWATCH SHOULD BE A POWERFUL YET EXPENDABLE LAST RESORT. The Overwatch of Willards are weak and expendable, I've heard whole stories where 60+ Overwatch characters can get killed by just a small group of rebels. That's silly. A high-tier rebel should be 1:1 Equal with an Overwatch soldier, with the things going for Overwatch being their weapons superiority and the things going for the rebel being his ability to ambush and sneak-attack the transhuman (lack of a distinctive running sound, etc.) Overwatch should have a tiny bit of character while also being a powerful tool that is only broken out very sparingly, either in the Nexus or during a Judgment Waiver+.
- TO CONCLUDE MY BULLET-POINTS FOR ACTUAL COMBINE MILITARY FORCES, Civil Protection should be a relatively weak yet expendable force. You shouldn't expect to keep a unit long, similarly as you shouldn't expect to keep a rebel or citizen too long. Civil Protection are cruel overseers who beat and murder anyone out of line mixed with the paranoia-ridden mindset of the NKVD during Stalin's Great Purge. Overwatch are expendable yet tactically effective soldiers only sent out when shit hits the fan.
- THE CIVIL MEDICAL RESEARCH UNION Should NOT be a cure-all organization. If you get shot twenty times and go into bleed-out, as long as you make it to the CMRU you're good to go. What kind of roleplay is that? A play to win arcade style mindset has infected the CMRU just as its' effected every other faction, prioritizing victory over actual roleplay.
- The CMRU should NOT have much at all in terms of medical supplies. The Combine don't give a FUCK about you, whether or not you're a Rank Leader or a random bluesuit. Medical supplies are better spent wasted on transhumans or being dissolved into resin and bio-paste to make cheap drugs and alcohol to keep the bluesuits happy than actually healing people. Just a few days ago I found SIX surgical kits just lying around in the CMRU lobby, SIX! Just laying around! Can you imagine that? Realistically that would hurt the CMRU in a major way, but no-one notices since they most likely have plenty of medical equipment to go around. Where's the fun in that?