Decline in RP Standards | Inappropriate RP

[MazuzaM]

GOOD EVENING LADS WHO ARE READING THIS

Have you perhaps noticed, especially if you are a long standing player in your community, that the server seriousness and Roleplay standards are going down the bin?

Does your experience even less dystopian than what it used to be? I will list every issue with the majority of the Factions as I witnessed first hand:

Citizens:
This is a mixed pot, there's some people who roleplay accordingly but it's a minority in confront to what I have seen.

- There is absolutely no sense or recognition of the situation you are in (20+ years of constant slavery, labour and malnutrition) and people tend to act the way they would in real life, directly breaking the rules under the FailRP Section

"------------- A character's / behaviour and view of the world should match the scale and sense of the world they're living in, not real life."

Civil Protection:
I'm sorry to say this, as a Civpro main, I am afraid that this faction is the one that had the biggest decline in RP Standards, there are so many problems in my opinion and others:

- Metrocops feel like high school bullies, there is no real surgical protocol to follow to interact with Citizens or preserve conversations in public. I feel Starboat bait is part of this problem.

- The idea of a kind Metrocop (Which is overdone) should be rarely done and more punished by Command. No, I'm not saying that your cop should be a sadic that finds pleasure in hurting other people, but keep in mind you passed years of indocrination no matter what if your character chooses a path in the Civil Protection, they should be displayed more surgically rather than some 70s cop in Brooklyn.

ESPECIALLY the problem resides with some Rank Leaders, they recieve the same Memory replacement as Transhumans, the guide clearly states that they should be feared yet they act like some cool coaches for the units and fail to make you feel oppressed.

Resistance:
I've also played the Resistance, RP Hubs are enjoyable but the problem still lingers with inappropriate Roleplay for characters as they are:
- Self Proclaimed Warriors and fearless fighers
- Semi Serious Minges who only play to S2K (Fewer minority)

Before you say ha ha here's the fun police, no, there's ways of enjoying Roleplay by doing it accordingly, this is what Willard HL2RP should be, not a sitcom of silly jokes and corny actions to get on the Starboard.

 

[verTix]

it’s really not hard to capture the atmosphere and also have entertaining or engaging mechanics

yes you might have to gamify the citizen loop. yes you might have to do IC recruitment for cops and other jobs. yes you might have to create automated workshifts for people to grind

is this really any worse than the nothing burger that is the citizen experience right now? people will cry that it’s bad for rp, and there’s doubt that it is in some ways, but other factions have mindless grinding too. why not citizens?

not to derail this thread or anything but all of this is achievable while still having good quality roleplayers in civil protection and citizen. just kick out the people who suck

 

[Lord Beckett]

Another way of failing your job is also turning the entire civilian population against the regime YOU support because all you can think about is mindlessly droning around, cracking skulls, robbing, harassing, and killing people over minor inconveniences. Certain CivPro players are no better than the "rebels" and "slummers" that you are actively trying to crush.

You can always say, "This is how they act in HL2," but do they really? I never saw oppression and violence against civilians in HL2 to the extent that Willard Civil Protection players have put their citizen players under. You can argue lore, but that is all up to personal interpretation.

Nobody said you have to be mindless. Nobody said you have to be overly vicious. You can have a character that is restricted by IC circumstances and who still finds ways, likely surreptitiously, to show their humanity. That's why we call characters who are too edgy robocops. It's because they have no character and are one-sided. But the other extreme can be just as bad: someone who acts in a manner inconsistent with the universe by being openly magnanimous and friendly, even silly in certain cases. The balance here is to develop a character that is nuanced enough to play both sides. Whether they favor one side or the other is up to them, and the excitement lies in trying to navigate your way along that development path through a minefield of moral dilemmas.

Maybe it's true that Willard's Civil Protection has very few players capable of pulling that off skillfully. That's no excuse for us to not try help them become better roleplayers. They have always been the face of the server, and they should act as such.

 

[Lord Beckett]

Honestly even this has always felt like people taking what is at best meant to imply the Combine could simply revoke keeping a CP's family together throughout relocations (as opposed to simply splitting them up like they do everyone else) and twisting it into some grimdark "THEY'LL HUNT AND KILL YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY IF YOU FAIL THEM!!!!".

Its nonsensical and deprives the Combine of able-bodied workers for next to no reason. They're cold and pragmatic, not pointlessly cruel. Its punishment enough that you could lose contact with your entire family and not know where they went - even then frankly I don't think they'd care enough to even split them back up. You'd never know regardless.

And even then, in terms of the server, the default attitude being total hostility across the board doesn't promote roleplay with citizens. It pushes people into not wanting to interact with cops for OOC reasons, not just IC ones, and that is a lot harder to fix. I can tell you from experience that being met with utterly hostile and aggressive units on my citizen didn't make me wanna give them more roleplay, it just made me go somewhere else on the map.

As for this point, I'm not sure what to tell you. Whether or not you think family cohesion is an effective system is irrelevant. Family cohesion is well-established as a core element of Civil Protection in the HL2 universe. And I would argue the Combine have plenty of reasons to keep Civil Protection unwaveringly loyal at the expense of the Earth's dwindling population. I think it would be impossible to maintain a human police force loyal to an alien regime without instilling massive amounts of fear into the police themselves.

As for your last paragraph, I would refer you to my post above. Citizens can absolutely have a rewarding experience with Civil Protection if the CPs roleplay good characters. I've seen it happen many times, and I've been playing HL2RP since 2013. It's rare, I admit, but it is possible.

 

[Badger]

Your criticism is incredibly valid but I'm afraid Willard playerbase over time may have just changed too much, and the majority seems more interested in turning Willard into a semi serious rp server than in addressing any of these. Hence the people here calling for mindless grinding for citizens and saying CivPro being brutally oppressive makes no sense... Like what setting are you guys playing on?

 

[verTix]

Your criticism is incredibly valid but I'm afraid Willard playerbase over time may have just changed too much, and the majority seems more interested in turning Willard into a semi serious rp server than in addressing any of these. Hence the people here calling for mindless grinding for citizens and saying CivPro being brutally oppressive makes no sense... Like what setting are you guys playing on?

Or maybe the setting itself is the problem. How can you give citizens interesting methods to develop their characters in a dystopian setting where any and all interaction is heavily monitored or outright banned? You don’t. There’s a reason serious HL2 city RP is dying; people are realizing there’s infinitely better media (even in the HL2 universe) to base their RP servers on.

I implore you to find a solution to the citizen boredom problem that isn’t gameplay focused and without sacrificing oodles of lore accuracy, because no long-lasting serious city RP server worth its salt ever has. Good luck.

 

[MazuzaM]

and twisting it into some grimdark "THEY'LL HUNT AND KILL YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY IF YOU FAIL THEM!!!!

In the first fraction of Half Life 2 there is a woman who asks you if you've seen her husband who was taken by the Overwatch cause they were in the same train

The man was executed, this shows that the Combine will correct mistakes with amputation, as society is viewed as a single organism and "malignant" cells are amputated from the populus

The Combine is a totalitarian regime; it uses ideology, propaganda, surveillance, and force to reshape people’s existence entirely. a single Officer's family won't change their exploitation of the planet, earth is not even indispensable to them, with the Suppresson Field active it makes no sense to imply that the Combine needs workers.

 

[Lab]

At this point there's no use arguing about picky points. Faction Leads have likely read this, and will do their best to correct for misbehaviour and guide the faction along the lines that they want to portray.

 

[Rebel RP Philosopher]

could you elaborate

Your Rebel RP PhilosopherGPT trial has expired. To extend by 1 more post, like 50 of my posts to continue.

 

[Rabid]

In the first fraction of Half Life 2 there is a woman who asks you if you've seen her husband who was taken by the Overwatch cause they were in the same train

The man was executed, this shows that the Combine will correct mistakes with amputation, as society is viewed as a single organism and "malignant" cells are amputated from the populus

The Combine is a totalitarian regime; it uses ideology, propaganda, surveillance, and force to reshape people’s existence entirely. a single Officer's family won't change their exploitation of the planet, earth is not even indispensable to them, with the Suppresson Field active it makes no sense to imply that the Combine needs workers.

I've never said the Combine aren't oppressive - there's plenty to draw from to prove that, and I'll agree with you there.

To highlight the woman you mentioned, they don't rub it in her face. They don't tell her "YOUR HUSBAND IS A TRAITOR AND HE'S DEAD!!!" - they simply tell her she can wait for him, uncaring of the fact he's never going to arrive and will either be killed or sent to be turned into a Stalker. That couple is a statistic, a number, like everyone else. I suppose I don't see a need to make the Combine even more grimdark to justify what keeps cops loyal or in-line when by nature making the leap to enlist is already a ball-and-chain to units.

I used to be of the opinion that making The Combine as "literally awful as the most baseline reading of HL2 implies" was the way to go but time and experience have taught me otherwise through some rather shitty lessons.

I don't think you and I actually disagree on the fact things should be tightened up, but I think we disagree on by how much.

As for your last paragraph, I would refer you to my post above. Citizens can absolutely have a rewarding experience with Civil Protection if the CPs roleplay good characters. I've seen it happen many times, and I've been playing HL2RP since 2013. It's rare, I admit, but it is possible.

I agree, and this is what I'm arguing for.

Willard has a habit of overcorrecting to try and fix things, and I've seen enough cases of cops being reduced to "RP-killing non-characters" by players because the only time they can express themselves otherwise is forcing them to sneak off into an alley or wherever and risk a demotion or a PK to have a chat with a citizen to last me a lifetime.

This in turn makes the CP faction a net-negative in the eyes of rebels and citizens alike.

The first time I properly played Willard was during a period of time where the idea of ruthless oppression was being pushed from the top down and it left a mark for how utterly unfun it was to interact with as a citizen. God knows how those AFK CP's felt.

 

[MrTuki]

Your criticism is incredibly valid but I'm afraid Willard playerbase over time may have just changed too much, and the majority seems more interested in turning Willard into a semi serious rp server than in addressing any of these. Hence the people here calling for mindless grinding for citizens and saying CivPro being brutally oppressive makes no sense... Like what setting are you guys playing on?

Idk but the moment I see a shitizen resisting arrest I damn the shit PK policy because 9 times out of 10 I want to drive a bullet into the skull of every loyalist that thinks they are above the nazi like paramilitary police force just for having a funny colored armband

 

[Processed_Grain]

Idk but the moment I see a shitizen resisting arrest I damn the shit PK policy

That "shit PK policy" is the ONLY thing stopping the "Liberators", captured rebels, Emiyo Marcum, or any other problematic person/s from being fucking gunned down in a firing line before they could get off the ground btw. Be careful what you wish for because "The Combine being brutally oppressive" goes far in both ways.

 

[Processed_Grain]

That "shit PK policy" is the ONLY thing stopping the "Liberators", captured rebels, Emiyo Marcum, or any other problematic person/s from being fucking gunned down in a firing line before they could get off the ground btw. Be careful what you wish for because "The Combine being brutally oppressive" goes far in both ways.

The MCP dissident program should not exist and Rebels don't get PKed nearly enough. The "Powers at Be" see too it that Gordon Freeman in City 17 is turned into a free win for the faction - ergo, they pull up things like this:

(thankfully NATH shut this down before it could get off the ground but it *really* says a lot about the Rebel Playerbase when they feel fine coming up with things like this)

 

[Processed_Grain]

Whether or not you think family cohesion is an effective system is irrelevant. Family cohesion is well-established as a core element of Civil Protection in the HL2 universe. And I would argue the Combine have plenty of reasons to keep Civil Protection unwaveringly loyal at the expense of the Earth's dwindling population. I think it would be impossible to maintain a human police force loyal to an alien regime without instilling massive amounts of fear into the police themselves.

Also - quick and *very* real question: Is Family Cohesion every actually explained directly as "We're killing your family"?

Think about it - 'Cohesion'/Dis-Cohesion doesn't quite make sense in Overwatch's newspeak medical vocabulary that's used for such things. "Preserving Cohesion" sounds more like "You get to still talk to your family and loved ones via letters or brief monthly intermail when you've killed enough Anti-Citizens" as opposed to "We're just killing several people across the world with zero relation to you just because you failed your job"

Also- if you really cared about helping your family, what would be the point of joining Civil Protection if they openly admit "we're killing them to keep you loyal"

 

[Curbalas]

The MCP dissident program should not exist and Rebels don't get PKed nearly enough. The "Powers at Be" see too it that Gordon Freeman in City 17 is turned into a free fucking win for you people - ergo, they pull up shit like this:
View attachment 47533
(thankfully NATH shut this down before it could get off the ground but it *really* says a lot about the Rebel Playerbase when they feel fine coming up with things like this)

It is very much for potential for rebels to do an uprising and it has been seen on many occassions that rebels did uprisings and won. Like the Madrid incursion and older examples where I was not a part of, and the so-called "the PK policy that makes Combine not oppressive" is a gameplay need that ensures the server's health, it also goes both ways for the loyalists who OOCly decides to hate on rebel players for doing what their faction is supposed to do, destroy combine infrastructures and disturb their activities. That PK policy protects councillors, where, rebels would, absolutely kill anyone who help the Combine terrorize the humanity, but the PK policy goes against it.

So I would very much speak non-biased about the PK policy as it protects loyalist players as well it does for rebels, it provides a fair environment, which is also enjoyable.

And also to mention, rebels are very much prepared to do an uprising in a district like this, or somewhere fucked up like City 24 as well, it is not being managed well ICly and the lack of resources show, an uprising would already been possible with the IC talks that have been going with high-class people but the GMs went against it.

Not everything in this server are supposed to appease the loyalist players, they will get hits just like the rebels do, always. The server has a clear problem thinking that "oh rebels should suffer they r the rebels and the combine is awesome and powerful!!" and everything rebels suffer gets disregarded since "Oh there is a group that actively FUCKS over the Combine so they should suffer too" and its just Combine-side losing S2Ks and placing the blame on us.

Also fuck you to whoever thinks we don't RP, maybe we just don't like roleplaying with people who don't like us ICly and OOCly

 

[ford-michigan]

I also think some people are going too far into the loyalism RP. Calm down, it's just a game.

 

[RedHotGinger]

That "shit PK policy" is the ONLY thing stopping the "Liberators", captured rebels, Emiyo Marcum, or any other problematic person/s from being fucking gunned down

One of these is not like the others...

That being said, I suppose I may as well step in and inform a certain amount of irony presented by this 'remark'

The PK policy exists for two general purposes as I see it
1. To limit situations where a persons extensive effort into a character is wasted by meaningless or completely irrelevant deaths. Which would cause immense dissatisfaction with the vast majority of the playerbase
2. To protect characters from players who do not respect others in the slightest, and would gladly kill whenever, and however possible just for the chance to feel powerful, eliminate possible hurdles, or settle OOC vendettas.

I think, personally, number two is becoming an increasing reason as to why its only getting tighter and tighter on restrictions. OOC bullshit and even shitter attitudes are more regularly seeping into IC actions, and your own message highlights the distinct possibility you resent the PK policy because it disables your ability to eliminate entities you don't like *out of character.*

I don't like the liberators antics too much either, I dont blame them for it too much, but Im still not a fan. I've even gone so far as to say they probably need some OOC restrictions tethered to them for the sake of the server. That being said, the idea of using the PK policy as a weapon to cull things you don't like is exactly why its there. To prevent you from doing that.

---

In more general terms for the thread at large, I think the problem will be partially self-solving going forward. The 'starboard bait' mentality has taken a massive blow recently, and it will likely cause the community as a whole to discourage anybody seen doing it.

As mentioned above, its good to not overcorrect. Not every single joke made by a character should be conflated to being semi-serious. It cannot be a requirement for every character to stand in the rain-fall and stare upwards with barely retained stoicism. People are capable of being lax even in stressful situations, it depends. HL2 and HLA both had characters who were not constantly dreading the next few seconds and took moments to lighten the mood.

 

[Rabid]

@Curbalas is entirely right - the PK rules aren't perfect but they are built around not letting either side go apeshit on the other, which they would absolutely do. Would the Combine "realistically" kill all the rebels and go scorched earth? Sure! But decisions made in the name of realism aren't always fun or good for the server's health.

What a lot of people - including myself - would say was the best era of Willard's CityRP (the Bottlestreet/CA political parties 1.0 era of late 2020 to mid 2021) ended purely because of an OOC dislike and months of complaints from the then-management based on these things not being totally in line with the source material and being deemed "unfitting".

Realism won out, but CityRP suffered in a way it hasn't really healed from.

 

[Processed_Grain]

and the so-called "the PK policy that makes Combine not oppressive" is a gameplay need that ensures the server's health, it also goes both ways for the loyalists who OOCly decides to hate on rebel players for doing what their faction is supposed to do, destroy combine infrastructures and disturb their activities. That PK policy protects councillors, where, rebels would, absolutely kill anyone who help the Combine terrorize the humanity,

For context, the image above is the player who attempted to blow up Callaway the other day in the middle of "roleplay"

A *character* that has existed since 2023 could have been insta-pked by this guy with the current rules with no questions asked.

Rebels pretty much already have free reign to do what you've stipulated, even if relegated to 'official' members of CCA (People said councillors election to represent their will)

But actually - I digress, given you've proved my point in the end by stipulating how we can't be just killing each other 24/7 (no matter how much we want too). I was only taking Tuki's thinking to it's most logical end, that being; "If you think Loyalists deserve to die for thinking they are at least on an equal basis with Civil Protection (Which btw makes complete sense given it's been shown throughout history that conformists/supporters of a 'nazi-like' regime have always received favoritism and been more than amicable with it's enforcers, be it the SS or otherwise), then you also have to take it the other way and surgically dismantle every rebel faction from the get go with 'ReAlLStIc', common sense executions of obvious anti-citizens before they can even get off the ground."

 

[Processed_Grain]

I think, personally, number two is becoming an increasing reason as to why its only getting tighter and tighter on restrictions. OOC bullshit and even shitter attitudes are more regularly seeping into IC actions, and your own message highlights the distinct possibility you resent the PK policy because it disables your ability to eliminate entities you don't like *out of character.*

I have a few qualms with the policy not because I hold some OOC vendetta but because - as it stands - there is literally no way for the Loyalist Faction (AKA The Combine Faction, also the Antithesis to the Rebel Faction) to ''fight back''. Whilst the Rebel Faction can do massive JW-causing attacks days within the event or plan to throw any OOC considerations regarding what Loyalists might be doing as seen with the "i24 uprising" doc, ''Overwatch'' (The guys meant to represent the Loyalist faction and who are meant to ensure this doesn't happen) can barely put together a Shadow Sweep to NLR a few people and have no aspirations to actually do anything that might possibly damage the Rebel Faction.

On a purely platonic level, PK policy between the Rebel and Loyalist factions should be entirely the same. This however is not the case and the Rebel Faction has taken that one clause in the Civil Protection handbook about Civil Protection being "Expendable" compared to their rebel counterparts in S2K to it's full extent.

So, yes. Maybe I do sadly see the PK policy as a means to cull things I don't like. This however is just only sensible recourse given the other side has proven that they themselves like to do the exact same.

 

[ford-michigan]

Combine Faction

That is the OTA, CPs, and synths. Loyalists are the citizens.