Botulism
Really Corrupt
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2023
- Messages
- 435
- Thread Author
- #1
A (Definitely not) Short Critique of How Civil Protection Is Handled In Willards
And What I'm Going To Do to Fix It.
A finale of all my previous critiques of the server environment.
Botulism City.
Introduction.
Hey! I hope this is going to be a rather short piece (Author's note, it WON'T.) I already fear I've become known as just one of the guys who bitch and moan on the forums, a penny waiting for change, so I'll try to keep it to a minimum with this one, as I'll consider it my last for the time being. Despite that 'minimum', I think this one will mean the most to me outside of my various writing pieces proclaiming my desire for a better, more 'alive' roleplaying experience.
It means the most to me because Civil Protection is easily the life-blood of Half Life 2 Roleplay. There's nothing to do as a citizen without them. Nothing to rebel against, nothing to fight against, nothing to cautiously befriend and score a few cigarettes off of, nothing to capture and torture and kill or get captured and tortured and killed by. These masked species-traitors are a large part of the fun in Half Life 2 for me, either playing against them or playing as them. I'd consider myself a 'combine main', but I always try to play a citizen on the side so I know what feels sportsmanly and unsportsmanlike in RP, but really, I'm one of those roleplayers who is cool with just about anything. That's why I continue to play on this gamemode.
Instead of an abject rant with no solution offered, I'm providing clear solutions for the things I've witnessed. Some of these will be about the roleplay experience itself, and the ways players exercise their roleplay freedom. Everything I state going on the latter end can be rebuked with "Well, they're players, they can do what they want." And I agree, but when you get whitelisted and flagged to play as a cop, you're an unofficial representative of the server's roleplay in more ways than one. You're the first real memorable interaction many new citizens will receive, and how hard (or how soft) you are determines whether or not they'll feel invested to keep playing on the server.
Without further ado, I'll get on with it.
Critiques About Civil Protection Atmosphere Itself, Mostly Excluding The Characters.
Civil Protection was originally meant to be heavily regimented, structured, and robotic. The HL2 canon depiction of Civil Protection does not really allow for any roleplay freedom, with every cop being kept up on a constant dosage of drugs and the promise of their whole family not getting liquidated to do whatever Dispatch tells them. They're robots, basically.
This was NOT a formula that would've worked, and original HL2RP servers knew this.
What did they do in this stead? They took the original aesthetic of Civil Protection as gifted to them from the files of Half Life 2 and refitted it to one of the main inspirations of Half Life 2's more dystopian motifs, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Loyalists and Civil Protection members with personalities never had a place in the original, rather bare-bones Half Life 2 formula that served only as a showcase to the player as to how far the world had fallen since the original game, but they did now. In the original formulas of Half Life 2, when the server was ran right, excelling in Civil Protection was based on merit, and not the simple merit of S2King better than anyone else, but being able to go further than any of your predecessors.
In short, brutality, anti-intellectualism, and loyalty to the regime and your superiors got you ahead of every other character who couldn't stomach such an action. The torture or execution of a mostly innocent, intelligent civilian would very-well prevent a thoughtful, coherent rebellion later down the line. Cops were always on the move, always staking someone's apartment out, always performing a sweep on their own accord, always performing searches or maintaining a presence, and they were rewarded for it with recognition by their peers and superiors.
At one point in Shockcore, my low-ranking ground unit was executed for simply stating that the Benefactors weren't deities. The cops waited 3-days after they originally heard him say that just to execute him, almost as if they knew he was dead. It was scarily similar to 1984, and I loved the shit out of how realistic it was, even if my twelve-year-old ass cried like a little bitch after. It made me start reading that book and reading into totalitarian regimes as a kid, and I still have an interest in them to this day.
The numbers always swelled, too. In any server with 70 players, at least 25 of those would be cops. This was back when being a sewer rebel was something to fear because cops did constant sweeps and killed any poor fuck who didn't have a good hiding spot, so most resistance members lived within the city and didn't just sit in a corner marveling at their horde of scripts the entire day. A city in real life has millions, but the city in-game only had a few dozen people and still felt very, very alive.
The city in Willard's Half Life 2 Roleplay looks sufficiently dystopian, but next to no effort is spent by CP faction members and leads to do what the faction is meant to do outside of fighting random antlion ambushes, randomly beating people for actual real world crimes, and fighting shotcops. In fact, much of the effort is spent going against any oppressive atmosphere and actively subverting it. Corrupt cops are done away with and refused promotions, and cops that are 'too oppressive' (rarely true in HL2RP) are thrown out in favor of middle-of-the-road blank slates who outright go against the oppressive atmosphere.
I will say this, and if you don't even READ this and there's only one thing you take out of it, let it be this:
The amount of effort that Civil Protection spends roleplaying as an oppressive entity DIRECTLY CORRELATES with the development, roleplaying ability, etc. That the Resistance faction has.
What do I mean by this? If you don't roleplay an oppressive presence at all, the rebels who become rebels lose character because they have very little to rebel against -- if you go the full mile and make the city feel like it's in the midst of a Stalinist great purge, the rebellion will have a LOT more flavor, umph and pizazz to it than now. People whine about CvR and how both faction members are autistically at each others' throats OOCly, but that should NOT be the case. OOCly, they should be working in tandem to produce a cohesive, sensical, and realistic city under rule by a puppet government supervised by alien overlords.
Rebel players thus previously complained at length about how the Combine was too harsh, but that was just a play-to-win whining attempt to save their own skins and 'win' the game, when there's no winning in HL2RP. Now that these subversive community members are mostly out, we should really up the stakes and throw in the human element into our roleplay.
That's all for that segment, now to move toward the next two -- my critique of the leads and subversive faction members, and what I want to be done about it, and what I will do about it.
Critiques About Civil Protection Roleplay, Faction Leads, Etc.
I talked with Ultima about this and he explained to me that one of the main problems with the faction is that the faction leads are busy with real life matters. That's COMPLETELY understandable, I have a full-time job at a company I love and I'm saving up money to eventually get a simple degree from a college. I can't be expected to be on here 24/7, but in everything I do, I strive for perfection. I work hard and I play hard, and when I'm roleplaying, the main fun of me is exercising my writing abilities to the fullest and seeing what I can do. If players don't have the time, they should be replaced. Not out of hate, but out of understanding and sportsmanship. Just like any other whitelisted player when they go inactive for too long.
The faction's OOC state of affairs doesn't really allow for me, or many others to do that. With no real lead who wants to take the story in somewhere riveting and fun to experience for everyone, the faction is left without a sense of clear direction and characters are just left to their own devices. This would be okay if it was a loose conglomerate of resistance members, but this is Civil Protection we're talking about. The city has never felt more lifeless and disconnected. Civil Protection and Civil Workers barely work with each other and feel more like divorced parents sending their bluesuit kids off to the other parent for the weekend ("Workshift? Here, you take him, Civil Worker. I'm just gonna watch and smoke a ciggy until I get them back." Mentality.)
There's a critical lack of interesting characters and compelling stories, especially in the higher ranks. Many of the Civil Protection characters are promoted more based on simply how well they perform in S2K rather than their personalities, ability to roleplay an oppressive gas-masked thug, or how helpful they are to the Combine's objectives. Some characters are literally counter-intuitive to the Combine's rule by fear. While playing as my North Korean cop, he witnessed an RL and an I4 get intoxicated in the city and apparently beat each other up with stun-batons near an MCP Agent.
And nothing was done.
Of course nothing was done, I mean, this should be handled ICly, right? But who does a lowly ground unit complain to, the Chief who is rarely never on and if he is, wouldn't care to take an audience from a unit about such a complaint? How about the Captain, who will deduct ten sterilized credits (equivalent to ten hours of roleplay) from your file for talking out of turn on the radio? There's a severe and strange division between the amount of discipline going on with characters, and the bias is all over the place. There's no uniformity, you have hyper-lenient cops who will promote you a day after your promotion to I5 just for not having anything on your file, and hyper-strict cops who will fuck you up for looking the wrong way. You'll also have really middle of the road, boring cops who really don't pay attention to anything going on, and treat the faction like an actual job, one that they're extremely OOCly bored of.
There's no uniformity in a faction where everyone dresses, looks, and sounds nearly the same.
When there's a failure to roleplay going on and you can't handle it in-character, you take it OOC and address the issue. All Units, with command units being given more scrutiny, should be held to a higher standard than citizen roleplayers and should be expected to roleplay a certain way, even more than there was previously. They should be expected to be of a certain character and have some similarities, with every single cop possessing the ability to be cruel (or atleast mimic cruelty) and maintaining a thuggish demeanor. In a totalitarian, alien-run fascist/communist/whatever you wanna callit-ist society, they'd only prioritize fit, scary and loyal individuals to be in their auxiliary force. You might say 'Look at Barney, he ain't scary', but he was definitely intimidating before he took off the mask, wasn't he?
What I've Already Done About It, My Failures And Successes, And What I'm Going To Do About It Now.
My first attempt at helping the faction was making my own cop character that lived up to everything I prioritized out of an 'ideal' Civil Protection member. PATROL-36 was human, he was a scary fascist, he was bold, weak, strong, sadistic, and in a span of around 22 days exhibited every single emotion in the book. If you saw him one day he executed numerous people, and the other he was bawling his eyes out to a fellow cop that he'd abused and ragged on in the middle of City Eight's slums for something he did. I gave him a mentally ill streak after he'd killed about fifteen individual characters that involved him being constantly on the watch for shadow-people out of the corner of his eye. It felt sufficiently edgy but also sensical and disturbing for a man who'd done so many horrible things. He felt very little mercy about any of it, but it definitely affected his conscience in an unexpected way.
From inviting around 30 citizens to watch a public execution (that he alone organized) of a man preaching a strange Breen-worshipping religion, throwing a Conscript Lieutenant in a pillory and preparing to carve her up for being suspected of espionage, to torturing a civilian wrongly committed of a crime and carving 'CMB' on his chest, he was everything I felt a CP should've been. Gruff, masculine, yet mundane and pathetic. Terrifying because of how little he had to lose rather than his innate manhood (Of which he had little.) When I was on, I felt as if he was a finely tuned cog in the machine whilst I played. He never got promoted or rewarded for his efforts in oppressing the populace and adding development to players, and when he executed a mentally ill Conscript Ensign in public, that was considered going 'too far' by the command. In something I think was organized ICly by his superiors and the conscripts, he was to be covertly executed after being sent out on Outlands Duty, a plan which he uncovered out of sheer paranoia. He went out with his finger on the trigger, downing two superiors in a hail of gunfire before the Chief executed him. It was a great end for a character and I don't want him back, but in an ideal server, it shouldn't have happened that way.
In any old server, most of his actions would've been considered a model for every Unit to follow, and OOCly I would've been able to keep the momentum up once he got promoted to a suitable rank or died in a gunfight. In this current Civil Protection though, he was punished and ostracized anytime he did anything that could've stirred tension and created more interesting roleplay through the use of suitable oppression, whilst characters who didn't stir the pot and just 'did their job' enjoyed success.
Ultimately, he was executed for fulfilling his job description. I failed. I wanted to keep him alive and inspire a whole new bunch of creative, oppressive CP characters, but I failed 36. There are things I shouldn't have ideally RPed if I wanted to keep him alive, but in death he served as a more valuable lesson for me, and in turn writing this than anything.
I realize this sounds whiny using a personal example, and it's no doubt biased because of how I felt, but I knew the most about what my character alone experienced, so it helps to write what I know. I do not feel any anger or 'salt' about what happened, but it serves perfectly as an example of a microcosm of the factions' flaws.
Currently, my success I consider is writing a relatively alright advice-filled 'guide' on an oppressive Civil Protection character's mindset (Linked), but I want to do more. If nobody else can do something right, you gotta do it yourself. I'm going to throw up a list of what I hope to accomplish or see accomplished.
CIVIL PROTECTION BEHAVIOR GUIDE
HOW TO ROLEPLAY A CONVINCING, REALISTIC, EVEN TERRIFYING DEPICTION OF A TYRANT.
Written By Botulism
Intended for both routine Civil Protection players and aspiring ones.
PART ONE: INTRODUCTION
I am writing this guide because I feel like many Civil Protection players have a fundamental...
A GENERAL LIST OF WHAT I HOPE TO SEE ACCOMPLISHED FOR THE FACTION IN THE FUTURE.
IC Apps, and constant application drives until at least 20 Cops are online at peak population.
Vetting of current Civil Protection characters, and active encouragement to play certain archetypes that all fit violent, robust, bold molds. From super oppressive corrupt loyalist cops that dominate the fold to undercover resistance agents, gang infiltrators, opportunists, cynics, and more.
Harsher treatment on citizens and in general, constantly doing things as the faction. Active sweeps, purges, liquidations, public executions, events, etc. Should be an almost daily occurrence, and something the leads of the faction organize. Make it feel like the leads and units actually CARE.
Rewarding Corrupt, violent cops over innocent, loyal 'just doing their job' cops. The whole faction should be a violent thuggish scheme designed to root out anyone who goes against the Combine, and also anyone who fucks with the Civil Protection itself.
Most importantly of all? A reshuffling of the faction leads. The only real lead I prefer right now is Wraygun, and that's from personal experience. I do not say this from personal bias (I should actually have quite the opposite, considering his characters have antagonized mine LMAO) but I believe he has the right mindset and understanding of tyranny and oppression, and even though he's busy with IRL stuff as many of us are, has the right heart for maximum character development opportunities.
And last but not least, I don't care for the audacity involved in saying this, I'm going to submit a formal request to have my Cop be a Command Unit of some kind. I hold it against myself for not bothering to grind, but if you ask me, the people who have grinded aren't oppressive or interesting enough to warrant the merit of spending a few months doing sweeps and roleplaying only when Dispatch is on. The way I see it, I've been grinding for years on end, it shouldn't make a difference if I genuinely believe this faction needs my abilities so we can ensure everyone else can be even more invested and have more fun than normal.
That's all, stay tuned for said request. Add a agree emote if you agree with the general list or atleast the general message, and add a disagree if you think there's another solution present. All comments are welcome. Thank you, and God bless Mauritania.
And What I'm Going To Do to Fix It.
A finale of all my previous critiques of the server environment.
Botulism City.
Introduction.
Hey! I hope this is going to be a rather short piece (Author's note, it WON'T.) I already fear I've become known as just one of the guys who bitch and moan on the forums, a penny waiting for change, so I'll try to keep it to a minimum with this one, as I'll consider it my last for the time being. Despite that 'minimum', I think this one will mean the most to me outside of my various writing pieces proclaiming my desire for a better, more 'alive' roleplaying experience.
It means the most to me because Civil Protection is easily the life-blood of Half Life 2 Roleplay. There's nothing to do as a citizen without them. Nothing to rebel against, nothing to fight against, nothing to cautiously befriend and score a few cigarettes off of, nothing to capture and torture and kill or get captured and tortured and killed by. These masked species-traitors are a large part of the fun in Half Life 2 for me, either playing against them or playing as them. I'd consider myself a 'combine main', but I always try to play a citizen on the side so I know what feels sportsmanly and unsportsmanlike in RP, but really, I'm one of those roleplayers who is cool with just about anything. That's why I continue to play on this gamemode.
Instead of an abject rant with no solution offered, I'm providing clear solutions for the things I've witnessed. Some of these will be about the roleplay experience itself, and the ways players exercise their roleplay freedom. Everything I state going on the latter end can be rebuked with "Well, they're players, they can do what they want." And I agree, but when you get whitelisted and flagged to play as a cop, you're an unofficial representative of the server's roleplay in more ways than one. You're the first real memorable interaction many new citizens will receive, and how hard (or how soft) you are determines whether or not they'll feel invested to keep playing on the server.
Without further ado, I'll get on with it.
Critiques About Civil Protection Atmosphere Itself, Mostly Excluding The Characters.
Civil Protection was originally meant to be heavily regimented, structured, and robotic. The HL2 canon depiction of Civil Protection does not really allow for any roleplay freedom, with every cop being kept up on a constant dosage of drugs and the promise of their whole family not getting liquidated to do whatever Dispatch tells them. They're robots, basically.
This was NOT a formula that would've worked, and original HL2RP servers knew this.
What did they do in this stead? They took the original aesthetic of Civil Protection as gifted to them from the files of Half Life 2 and refitted it to one of the main inspirations of Half Life 2's more dystopian motifs, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Loyalists and Civil Protection members with personalities never had a place in the original, rather bare-bones Half Life 2 formula that served only as a showcase to the player as to how far the world had fallen since the original game, but they did now. In the original formulas of Half Life 2, when the server was ran right, excelling in Civil Protection was based on merit, and not the simple merit of S2King better than anyone else, but being able to go further than any of your predecessors.
In short, brutality, anti-intellectualism, and loyalty to the regime and your superiors got you ahead of every other character who couldn't stomach such an action. The torture or execution of a mostly innocent, intelligent civilian would very-well prevent a thoughtful, coherent rebellion later down the line. Cops were always on the move, always staking someone's apartment out, always performing a sweep on their own accord, always performing searches or maintaining a presence, and they were rewarded for it with recognition by their peers and superiors.
At one point in Shockcore, my low-ranking ground unit was executed for simply stating that the Benefactors weren't deities. The cops waited 3-days after they originally heard him say that just to execute him, almost as if they knew he was dead. It was scarily similar to 1984, and I loved the shit out of how realistic it was, even if my twelve-year-old ass cried like a little bitch after. It made me start reading that book and reading into totalitarian regimes as a kid, and I still have an interest in them to this day.
The numbers always swelled, too. In any server with 70 players, at least 25 of those would be cops. This was back when being a sewer rebel was something to fear because cops did constant sweeps and killed any poor fuck who didn't have a good hiding spot, so most resistance members lived within the city and didn't just sit in a corner marveling at their horde of scripts the entire day. A city in real life has millions, but the city in-game only had a few dozen people and still felt very, very alive.
The city in Willard's Half Life 2 Roleplay looks sufficiently dystopian, but next to no effort is spent by CP faction members and leads to do what the faction is meant to do outside of fighting random antlion ambushes, randomly beating people for actual real world crimes, and fighting shotcops. In fact, much of the effort is spent going against any oppressive atmosphere and actively subverting it. Corrupt cops are done away with and refused promotions, and cops that are 'too oppressive' (rarely true in HL2RP) are thrown out in favor of middle-of-the-road blank slates who outright go against the oppressive atmosphere.
I will say this, and if you don't even READ this and there's only one thing you take out of it, let it be this:
The amount of effort that Civil Protection spends roleplaying as an oppressive entity DIRECTLY CORRELATES with the development, roleplaying ability, etc. That the Resistance faction has.
What do I mean by this? If you don't roleplay an oppressive presence at all, the rebels who become rebels lose character because they have very little to rebel against -- if you go the full mile and make the city feel like it's in the midst of a Stalinist great purge, the rebellion will have a LOT more flavor, umph and pizazz to it than now. People whine about CvR and how both faction members are autistically at each others' throats OOCly, but that should NOT be the case. OOCly, they should be working in tandem to produce a cohesive, sensical, and realistic city under rule by a puppet government supervised by alien overlords.
Rebel players thus previously complained at length about how the Combine was too harsh, but that was just a play-to-win whining attempt to save their own skins and 'win' the game, when there's no winning in HL2RP. Now that these subversive community members are mostly out, we should really up the stakes and throw in the human element into our roleplay.
That's all for that segment, now to move toward the next two -- my critique of the leads and subversive faction members, and what I want to be done about it, and what I will do about it.
Critiques About Civil Protection Roleplay, Faction Leads, Etc.
I talked with Ultima about this and he explained to me that one of the main problems with the faction is that the faction leads are busy with real life matters. That's COMPLETELY understandable, I have a full-time job at a company I love and I'm saving up money to eventually get a simple degree from a college. I can't be expected to be on here 24/7, but in everything I do, I strive for perfection. I work hard and I play hard, and when I'm roleplaying, the main fun of me is exercising my writing abilities to the fullest and seeing what I can do. If players don't have the time, they should be replaced. Not out of hate, but out of understanding and sportsmanship. Just like any other whitelisted player when they go inactive for too long.
The faction's OOC state of affairs doesn't really allow for me, or many others to do that. With no real lead who wants to take the story in somewhere riveting and fun to experience for everyone, the faction is left without a sense of clear direction and characters are just left to their own devices. This would be okay if it was a loose conglomerate of resistance members, but this is Civil Protection we're talking about. The city has never felt more lifeless and disconnected. Civil Protection and Civil Workers barely work with each other and feel more like divorced parents sending their bluesuit kids off to the other parent for the weekend ("Workshift? Here, you take him, Civil Worker. I'm just gonna watch and smoke a ciggy until I get them back." Mentality.)
There's a critical lack of interesting characters and compelling stories, especially in the higher ranks. Many of the Civil Protection characters are promoted more based on simply how well they perform in S2K rather than their personalities, ability to roleplay an oppressive gas-masked thug, or how helpful they are to the Combine's objectives. Some characters are literally counter-intuitive to the Combine's rule by fear. While playing as my North Korean cop, he witnessed an RL and an I4 get intoxicated in the city and apparently beat each other up with stun-batons near an MCP Agent.
And nothing was done.
Of course nothing was done, I mean, this should be handled ICly, right? But who does a lowly ground unit complain to, the Chief who is rarely never on and if he is, wouldn't care to take an audience from a unit about such a complaint? How about the Captain, who will deduct ten sterilized credits (equivalent to ten hours of roleplay) from your file for talking out of turn on the radio? There's a severe and strange division between the amount of discipline going on with characters, and the bias is all over the place. There's no uniformity, you have hyper-lenient cops who will promote you a day after your promotion to I5 just for not having anything on your file, and hyper-strict cops who will fuck you up for looking the wrong way. You'll also have really middle of the road, boring cops who really don't pay attention to anything going on, and treat the faction like an actual job, one that they're extremely OOCly bored of.
There's no uniformity in a faction where everyone dresses, looks, and sounds nearly the same.
When there's a failure to roleplay going on and you can't handle it in-character, you take it OOC and address the issue. All Units, with command units being given more scrutiny, should be held to a higher standard than citizen roleplayers and should be expected to roleplay a certain way, even more than there was previously. They should be expected to be of a certain character and have some similarities, with every single cop possessing the ability to be cruel (or atleast mimic cruelty) and maintaining a thuggish demeanor. In a totalitarian, alien-run fascist/communist/whatever you wanna callit-ist society, they'd only prioritize fit, scary and loyal individuals to be in their auxiliary force. You might say 'Look at Barney, he ain't scary', but he was definitely intimidating before he took off the mask, wasn't he?
What I've Already Done About It, My Failures And Successes, And What I'm Going To Do About It Now.
My first attempt at helping the faction was making my own cop character that lived up to everything I prioritized out of an 'ideal' Civil Protection member. PATROL-36 was human, he was a scary fascist, he was bold, weak, strong, sadistic, and in a span of around 22 days exhibited every single emotion in the book. If you saw him one day he executed numerous people, and the other he was bawling his eyes out to a fellow cop that he'd abused and ragged on in the middle of City Eight's slums for something he did. I gave him a mentally ill streak after he'd killed about fifteen individual characters that involved him being constantly on the watch for shadow-people out of the corner of his eye. It felt sufficiently edgy but also sensical and disturbing for a man who'd done so many horrible things. He felt very little mercy about any of it, but it definitely affected his conscience in an unexpected way.
From inviting around 30 citizens to watch a public execution (that he alone organized) of a man preaching a strange Breen-worshipping religion, throwing a Conscript Lieutenant in a pillory and preparing to carve her up for being suspected of espionage, to torturing a civilian wrongly committed of a crime and carving 'CMB' on his chest, he was everything I felt a CP should've been. Gruff, masculine, yet mundane and pathetic. Terrifying because of how little he had to lose rather than his innate manhood (Of which he had little.) When I was on, I felt as if he was a finely tuned cog in the machine whilst I played. He never got promoted or rewarded for his efforts in oppressing the populace and adding development to players, and when he executed a mentally ill Conscript Ensign in public, that was considered going 'too far' by the command. In something I think was organized ICly by his superiors and the conscripts, he was to be covertly executed after being sent out on Outlands Duty, a plan which he uncovered out of sheer paranoia. He went out with his finger on the trigger, downing two superiors in a hail of gunfire before the Chief executed him. It was a great end for a character and I don't want him back, but in an ideal server, it shouldn't have happened that way.
In any old server, most of his actions would've been considered a model for every Unit to follow, and OOCly I would've been able to keep the momentum up once he got promoted to a suitable rank or died in a gunfight. In this current Civil Protection though, he was punished and ostracized anytime he did anything that could've stirred tension and created more interesting roleplay through the use of suitable oppression, whilst characters who didn't stir the pot and just 'did their job' enjoyed success.
Ultimately, he was executed for fulfilling his job description. I failed. I wanted to keep him alive and inspire a whole new bunch of creative, oppressive CP characters, but I failed 36. There are things I shouldn't have ideally RPed if I wanted to keep him alive, but in death he served as a more valuable lesson for me, and in turn writing this than anything.
I realize this sounds whiny using a personal example, and it's no doubt biased because of how I felt, but I knew the most about what my character alone experienced, so it helps to write what I know. I do not feel any anger or 'salt' about what happened, but it serves perfectly as an example of a microcosm of the factions' flaws.
Currently, my success I consider is writing a relatively alright advice-filled 'guide' on an oppressive Civil Protection character's mindset (Linked), but I want to do more. If nobody else can do something right, you gotta do it yourself. I'm going to throw up a list of what I hope to accomplish or see accomplished.
CIVIL PROTECTION BEHAVIOR GUIDE
HOW TO ROLEPLAY A CONVINCING, REALISTIC, EVEN TERRIFYING DEPICTION OF A TYRANT.
Written By Botulism
Intended for both routine Civil Protection players and aspiring ones.
PART ONE: INTRODUCTION
I am writing this guide because I feel like many Civil Protection players have a fundamental...
A GENERAL LIST OF WHAT I HOPE TO SEE ACCOMPLISHED FOR THE FACTION IN THE FUTURE.
IC Apps, and constant application drives until at least 20 Cops are online at peak population.
Vetting of current Civil Protection characters, and active encouragement to play certain archetypes that all fit violent, robust, bold molds. From super oppressive corrupt loyalist cops that dominate the fold to undercover resistance agents, gang infiltrators, opportunists, cynics, and more.
Harsher treatment on citizens and in general, constantly doing things as the faction. Active sweeps, purges, liquidations, public executions, events, etc. Should be an almost daily occurrence, and something the leads of the faction organize. Make it feel like the leads and units actually CARE.
Rewarding Corrupt, violent cops over innocent, loyal 'just doing their job' cops. The whole faction should be a violent thuggish scheme designed to root out anyone who goes against the Combine, and also anyone who fucks with the Civil Protection itself.
Most importantly of all? A reshuffling of the faction leads. The only real lead I prefer right now is Wraygun, and that's from personal experience. I do not say this from personal bias (I should actually have quite the opposite, considering his characters have antagonized mine LMAO) but I believe he has the right mindset and understanding of tyranny and oppression, and even though he's busy with IRL stuff as many of us are, has the right heart for maximum character development opportunities.
And last but not least, I don't care for the audacity involved in saying this, I'm going to submit a formal request to have my Cop be a Command Unit of some kind. I hold it against myself for not bothering to grind, but if you ask me, the people who have grinded aren't oppressive or interesting enough to warrant the merit of spending a few months doing sweeps and roleplaying only when Dispatch is on. The way I see it, I've been grinding for years on end, it shouldn't make a difference if I genuinely believe this faction needs my abilities so we can ensure everyone else can be even more invested and have more fun than normal.
That's all, stay tuned for said request. Add a agree emote if you agree with the general list or atleast the general message, and add a disagree if you think there's another solution present. All comments are welcome. Thank you, and God bless Mauritania.
Last edited:
