Vulpes Callida
Radio Bob Approved
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2022
- Messages
- 109
- Thread Author
- #1
First of all, a honest DISCLAIMER: this post does not wish to stir drama, point fingers at specific people, or make anyone feel guilty/in the wrong; even less to be remotely aggressive. It's an observation from my time of play here, with an addition of a mildly spiffed mood.
If you consider it is drama-stirring, I will delete it. If someone uses it as drama-stirring or using it as an excuse to personally attack others, I will delete it. I don't like to do these things, but this place seems to be like a nice community and it annoys me to see the same good people frustrated by the same subject over and over again. I made it not because something happened to me, but because I keep seeing it happen and everyone (both sides!) talks about it, but noone does anything.
On that same note, I invite those who wish to involve themselves in the discussion (regardless of opinion) to stray away from pedantry and similar condescending or hostile attitudes. "Chatting like adults" is pretty rare on the internet nowadays, and if you aren't one, or don't feel like at least pretending to be one, I'd appreciate it if you gave the words a thought or two instead, and voiced your opinion as respectfully as you could afterward.
On that note, I think I sound pretty angry in some of these, in retrospect... but I'm Spanish. It's how I speak. I'm good and calm. And I'd rather be straightforward and honest with my thoughts than try to be like 'uhm... u see... this isn't right because uhm...although u did try...' or worse, which is to be passive aggressive behind everyone's backs - so I apologise if any of my statements are mistakenly understood as what I just criticized.
First of all, some must-knows about me for context (WHO & WHY), so you understand my angle/take transparently:
a) I am a relatively new player (~3 months, May 2022), so there might be details from previous iterations, dramas, or behaviours, I might've missed. By that same rule, my interpretation of the things happening might be wrong. My discussion will be centered around those three months, exclusively, and I am of the thought that we shouldn't bring up anything further back than that. What's the point?
b) I have ~11 years experience with HL2RP. I have owned a server, managed a few plenty others, and played in a few more. At this point, I know this isn't much, since everyone seems to be some kind of forgotten legend nowadays. But I state this to both show I'm experienced enough in both of the involved factions (CP and Resistance/AC) and to showcase how I might be biased/exceedingly picky on accident. The years do make people grumpy and cynical, I do not aim to be ableist or elitist.
c) I do not have a "main" faction, but I have enjoyed CP/CCA more than I have enjoyed Resistance for the past 2-3 years. I also hate how most OTA factions are handled (WN's seems OK I guess) because OTA holds little to no development in my eyes. I like moral conflict over the more simplistic (but sometimes enjoyable) pew-pew-war-RP. Currently I have the intent of playing both main factions with the two characters I have, serverside. Currently, I am mostly only active on CP, as I've had to have the other out planned out & authorized.
d) As very few of you might know, I applied for resistance leader (with the character I ended up char-authing for) but backed off of the interview after passing the selection process due to the negativity I perceived toward the resistance from the playerbase. More on this later. But, to show, this is not a personal vendetta against any particular group for OOC reasons, nor faction bias, or "winning cope". I have not lost any characters, nor even had them be injured (luckily) on either side. I intend to play with you all, and I have no beefs with anyone. Except with @Mullin. Fuck Mullin.
e) I do not want to bash, I want to solve. Please, if there are issues from the other factions that are cause to all of this, I wanna know. If there are things we are doing wrong, we should tell eachother instead of going around saying shit in discord and turning our gaze to the side when the people we criticize show up. This is the point of a conversation. If this thread gets nowhere it'll be pretty sad. This can be fixed. We need to stop going around it.
Now, onto the issues I have noticed. Keep in mind, please, these are OBSERVATIONS, not FACTS. I know stating this is redundant in a suggestion/discussion post, but some people just never seem to get it from my own personal experience, so I might as well. I will try and keep it compact so the points get across and you aren't reading here for six years, but it's not gonna be easy:
1) The (great majority of) Resistance/Rebels/Criminals are not roleplaying as neither Resistance, Rebels or Criminals.
Quite the strong, incriminating start to the post, I know. Especially after all I've said. This is the part where I mention my favourite word ever, when it comes down to roleplay: COHESION. Altogether with continuity, they are the two base pillars (yet not all of them!) to construct a character in fiction that can get remotely close to resembling a real being, be it human or otherwise. What cohesion demands of a character is a direct connection between their goals and their actions, such in a way that they do not conflict with eachother. And, in the case they do conflict, for said clash to be justified narratively in a way that it makes sense, given the character's psyche or background. All in all, it is the unification, or connection, of all the concepts the character means to represent, in a comprehensive, realistic way.
Now, what's this mean, without all the nerd shit?
It means that for a character (or entire factions, in this case) to be cohesive it needs to be portrayed accordingly to its expressed intent and its belonging in the world. I think it'll be better understood with some examples of what I found is NOT cohesive, in the server. I will be referring to everyone as 'armed resistance' for now:
- It is not cohesive for an armed resistance to engage in large scale armed warfare/direct frontal conflict, unless they are moving their plans onto a full-blown uprising phase. Which, as I understand, isn't the case here. What resistances are especially weak to is attrition, given they should not possess the resources their oppresors do. Especially in the context of the world of Half-Life 2. Yet I feel like the concept is completely misunderstood. Once all alarms are up, where do you run to? You run off map, because that is OOC safety, and sadly it seems there are OOC protections in play (more on point 2) but that wouldn't exist in real life. It makes no sense.
- It is not cohesive for an armed resistance (the hand of the people) to engage in acts that directly harm the populace or cause generalized fear or hurt (terrorism) directly or indirectly, OR TO ALLOW IT from other groups. With this I am not saying they should be goody-two-shoes; history proves that wrong. But what a resistance wishes to push is a cause. Or at least, they seek to obtain a benefit. Killing indiscriminately only causes sweeps, which fucks them and the people they're trying to defend far more than the pieces of gear they might scrap off of it (I still struggle to imagine how willingly you have to ignore roleplay, to kill IC, for gear, and act like nothing happened). Another example of this is perhaps RDT's bombing. It's perhaps the silliest shit I've seen yet, next to being told they also bombed a homeless shelter. Or trying to bomb several public buildings in several streets (it got stopped...) Like... Seriously. Is there some kind of bomb fetish? What is the practical utility of any of this? Even real life terrorist groups who DO aim to harm the citizenship of a nation are more subtle, as a big enough destabilization would warrant unprecedented death or a huntdown. It's just impractical. And by that same logic, if what others do can also hurt you, you'd want to not let it happen.
More of this on point 2), though...
- It is not cohesive for an armed resistance to walk around pretending to be an army, or act like they "own the place" with little to no consequence. I've seen so many rebels casually in full gear walking around the slums as my civ that it makes me question whether they understand the setting they're playing in at all. The point of the gamemode is that you lost. And there's an argument to be made for the legitimacy of fighting back like we see in the games. I've seen more sweeps caused by someone who is so blissfully careless and unaware of the concept of roleplaying as someone who is (allegedly) oppressed, than anything else. And they even feel entitled to not flee, rather hold their ground, and see how many people they take down, which is the cherry on the cake. Why? Why not just, flee, and wait for the heat to cool down? Why make it significantly worse when there is
no necessity for it? Again... Ties into point 2).
Just like these examples, there are many, many more. Everything that doesn't feel 'real' enough, that is 'devoid' of consideration for the environment of the character, minimizing emotions, ignoring context and setting in favour of... Other things we'll see in point 2... That is what not being cohesive brings. Sound familiar? Yes - that is the definition of "FailRP" - a concept that I was surprised to see it does not current exist in the current Guidelines & Rules (link). As well as Powergame, but again, more on that on the following point.
2) The Resistance/Rebels/Criminals are (allowedly) unfiltered/favoured OOC, and they get away with breaking plenty of rules (or tip-toeing around them), whereas other factions do not.
Yeah. I mean, it's pretty straightforward.
- While some might argue that "now that the PKs are for everyone it is a levelled ground", I personally think that's bullshit. I've heard from many people how time and time again resistance oriented players remake similar to near-identical characters, and remake entire groups under different names, with akin personalities, and same OOC connections. As it stands, you do this in any other faction, or at least the CP, and you're dewhitelisted. In fact, you go as far as any of the stuff you saw in point 1) (applied respectively to the CP perspective, of course) and you'll be blacklisted, do anything you'll find in here, and you'll outright be banned. How this goes unregulated for so many people to mention it, even rebels to admit it, and no action to be taken goes beyond me. This essentially means that one side's deaths are meaningless from a development standpoint, whereas the others' are the opposite. IC, it's supposed to be the protection team that has 'replaceable goons', yet, OOC, it's the resistance that behaves like that, on near suicide missions over petty stuff that is comparable to "you killed my girlfriend combine you will pay aaagh!" at some points (I.E - an all out assault on a protection team because they 'killed an important rebel' the day before, the other day... wasn't even anyone related). What's the point of a character's life if you just remake it under a different name? What's the point of John Rebel's glorious death if John Rebel Jr. shows up the day after to take his exactly place...? That's all kinds of Fail RP, from Metagame to Powergame to... Everything discussed prior.
- The characters seem like they're played more for OOC benefit than for IC benefit. To specify, I have heard (and seen) how most people just create characters to farm scripts. I've heard of the legendary tales of Adhesive duping, I've heard and seen how people run about like headless chickens to get to the loot in time. There is little to no RP involved. It is no wonder the characters end up being played off as discardable cannonfodder with so little investment. Again, I am speaking about the majority, I know there are some who are completely exempt from all of this. It's also eerie how it feels some goals are more OOCly set than ICly set, in tandem with what was talked about point one. Seems it's a norm to think that something might be 'cool', or might screw up 'X faction in particular', so let's do it, rather than putting reasoning behind it IC. Such as... The latest bombing. Not to add how awfully managed I think the whole script thing is. "Events" are rewarded with scripts, else noone goes, so I've been told. Despite there being a very explicit rule to roleplay looting downed bodies, I've seen people just near a corpse midfight and /charsearch to bolt it later. That's how little the roleplay matters. And it's sad.
- A whitelist alone is not going to fix this. I understand there has been a lot of time and effort put into making the 'canon' resistance circumvent these exact issues and establish an OOC filter to avoid them, much like one exists in the case of the CP. But the problem isn't so much in organization, or lack of direction, but in attitude. I am fairly confident the people allegedly guilty of doing all of what we've discussed (maybe I'm wrong) are well aware of the fact what they're doing isn't exactly right, but as there is no direct, stable punishment for it, and there is an excessive amount of hate towards resistance players (more on this later) it serves as perfect excuse to keep doing it. The water's perfect for these kind of near bacterial attitudes to sprout in it. The more the people do it, the more others do it, too. It's a cycle.
- Guilty silence. I have lost track of the amount of times these issues have been brought up in the discord, I've checked the forums plenty for them, too. Only very few people taking active part in the resistance speak up about this, and most because of their own status of immunity within the community. By remaining quiet, it's allowed to continue. And some favour off of that. That's all I gotta say there.
- I've not seen a lot of events, but it seems they all could be summed up as "combine lose and end up looking stupid and or defeated despite their best efforts and other side are either completely uninvolved yet somehow look like the victors or they deny any and all affiliation with the chaos caused.".
- Perhaps the most important subpoint in this... point, is that some actions seem premeditately (and, as sad as it is, accidentally sometimes) intended to hinder the fun of other collectives OOC. At the very least, there is little to no thought put behind it. I am actually not sure if this is fault of the Event Team or the players (since noone ever says whether it's staff's narrative machinations). But it conflicts directly with literally the first rule of the server and the community (link again). What roleplay does it bring for the citizens to blow up RDT and leave them like 2 days without OOCly being able to collect their rations, and the rubble to be cleared up in 1-2 workshifts, nevermind the IC excuse (and lack of consequence, of course, because apparently the CCA does more for starving citizens than the resis...) that might be behind it? What roleplay does it bring to say "let's flag and shoot this cop who's out of position in the CZ" for the cop, when they're finished off with no roleplay and a dubitous IC motive? Sure, you get the gear, but at what price? Do you not think about the 7th time you're gonna make every civvie wait looking at a wall in the housing block today as the 18th weekly inspection after yet another rank leader got shot out of the blue takes place? In the Civil Protection, it is part of the very application to agree to playing with the notion of, despite your role as 'antagonist', helping nurture nearby RP and not obstruct it. There are self-set rules for both OTA and CP to avoid making resistance roleplay unfun or impossible for the citizenry and anti-citizenry alike - hell, the slums are open access. Even in interrogation, there are ways to save the character off of certain death. Why is this OOC courtesy not returned? There are bad apples in every faction, this isn't exclusive to the resistance, but I'd be lying if I said the ratio wasn't much larger in the case of them.
3) We (the people) suck big time, and we don't really want to admit it.
I know we're a big community, but this is the one point I'm not targetting exclusively to the resistance players. I feel like I've already sent enough flak up in the air.
Every discussion that ends up so far as grazing these points turns into a shitfest. Some people don't even bother to bring up the points, they just bicker and complain incessantly. They sound spiteful. Insults fly around. Names. They're also unforgiving of past events, creating this turmoilish brew where it's only passive-aggressive words back and forth. I've seen more crying in the CP discord and on server-discussion of WN than I've seen in my remaining 10 years of HL2RP. But there's ways to bitch and cry that are actually useful. Pointing out how someone sucks or how shit someone is is completely useless. It solves nothing. You can bitch and cry and propose answers and solutions. It's not always the others' fault. Maybe we're missing something. Maybe we just don't talk enough? Maybe we can save this marriage, Johann.
I myself nearly fell into this trap of bitching for the sake of it until I realized that you people might listen, or correct me. Because maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe we all are, and we kinda need to tell eachother. We just all need to become better. The factions, sure. The characters, also. But the people prolly more importantly.
We can roleplay, but that takes effort, and some of us are lazy. We can do things, IC and OOC, as both players and staff, but we don't. It's easier to just go "lmao shit rebels", I guess. This singular point is likely solely the cause of everything. You can just use the format "lmao shit __" for everything mentioned in this post. It's tiring. And a bit shameful, in all honesty. I could've mentioned in this post many more things, such as the lack of balance in weapons' damage values, bla bla bla... None of that really matters. It does, but not as much as this. We can ask the devs to add remove or change a million things, but I really do believe this is a people problem. Either we change the chip or we don't.
Effort is necessary. Especially if you guys spend as many hours as you do in server. You're dedicating a lot of time to your own enjoyment, so it might as well be secured. And you might as well make sure the rest enjoy it equally, too. I can see a lot of people being like "lmao dont care im having fun loser", or "you're making a mountain out of a molehill", or "lmao what are u talking about" but I sincerely think I'm not. Maybe it'll even be labelled as a "schizo post". Or there'll be the typical funny comment of "do u even play on the server". Why yes, yes I do, more than I probably should. I'm bummed out not at all because of what I've described, but at the fact I've seen people I like and respect, on both sides, get bummed out. It's like a chain. Seeing them sad or annoyed about the state of the server or the loss of their characters is not fun for me. I've seen it happen one time too many. Good roleplayers too. Losing months of work over dumb shit. Admins needing to resort to voids, PK appeals showing up en masse, "TBC is bugged", "It wasn't deserved"... In the last week or so there's been 5 PK appeals, with probably more being private. I know there's not been a few out of the frustration of knowing nothing will be done to fix the root of the issue. Some others also didn't happen because of a mass void that happened. So the count would, in reality, probably be fairly higher. It shows how quick the situation's getting outta hand. Both for CPs and resis. It's so tabboo as a whole, this subject, it's crazy. Why can't we just try a little bit to adjust to one another and provide eachother what we want? Instead of seeing who stomps the other harder?
If we can't do it on our own accord, we need rules in place. A lot of them. And we need the people to actually enforce the already existing ones, as well as the new ones, more seriously. Because apparently being scared at the fact of being put facing a wall with a cone hat that reads "dunce" drives the human brain more than actually wishing for any degrees of improvement.
So what're your solutions, nerd?
IDK bro, I'm 20k characters into this giga rant and I think one can easily infer what must be acted upon.
- Rules in place to avoid the negativity.
- Rules in place to avoid the bad roleplay (or rather, the lack thereof).
- Harder enforcement of the already existing rules equally across the board.
- Cohesive directing of characters and factions aided by Event Team.
- Dialogue dialogue dialogue. If we don't talk this through and reach an agreement it won't ever get fixed. Respond. Type.
- Issues with the other factions to be also brought up by those who suffer them. I'm blind to a lot of things.
Thank you for coming to my ted talk
If you consider it is drama-stirring, I will delete it. If someone uses it as drama-stirring or using it as an excuse to personally attack others, I will delete it. I don't like to do these things, but this place seems to be like a nice community and it annoys me to see the same good people frustrated by the same subject over and over again. I made it not because something happened to me, but because I keep seeing it happen and everyone (both sides!) talks about it, but noone does anything.
On that same note, I invite those who wish to involve themselves in the discussion (regardless of opinion) to stray away from pedantry and similar condescending or hostile attitudes. "Chatting like adults" is pretty rare on the internet nowadays, and if you aren't one, or don't feel like at least pretending to be one, I'd appreciate it if you gave the words a thought or two instead, and voiced your opinion as respectfully as you could afterward.
On that note, I think I sound pretty angry in some of these, in retrospect... but I'm Spanish. It's how I speak. I'm good and calm. And I'd rather be straightforward and honest with my thoughts than try to be like 'uhm... u see... this isn't right because uhm...although u did try...' or worse, which is to be passive aggressive behind everyone's backs - so I apologise if any of my statements are mistakenly understood as what I just criticized.
First of all, some must-knows about me for context (WHO & WHY), so you understand my angle/take transparently:
a) I am a relatively new player (~3 months, May 2022), so there might be details from previous iterations, dramas, or behaviours, I might've missed. By that same rule, my interpretation of the things happening might be wrong. My discussion will be centered around those three months, exclusively, and I am of the thought that we shouldn't bring up anything further back than that. What's the point?
b) I have ~11 years experience with HL2RP. I have owned a server, managed a few plenty others, and played in a few more. At this point, I know this isn't much, since everyone seems to be some kind of forgotten legend nowadays. But I state this to both show I'm experienced enough in both of the involved factions (CP and Resistance/AC) and to showcase how I might be biased/exceedingly picky on accident. The years do make people grumpy and cynical, I do not aim to be ableist or elitist.
c) I do not have a "main" faction, but I have enjoyed CP/CCA more than I have enjoyed Resistance for the past 2-3 years. I also hate how most OTA factions are handled (WN's seems OK I guess) because OTA holds little to no development in my eyes. I like moral conflict over the more simplistic (but sometimes enjoyable) pew-pew-war-RP. Currently I have the intent of playing both main factions with the two characters I have, serverside. Currently, I am mostly only active on CP, as I've had to have the other out planned out & authorized.
d) As very few of you might know, I applied for resistance leader (with the character I ended up char-authing for) but backed off of the interview after passing the selection process due to the negativity I perceived toward the resistance from the playerbase. More on this later. But, to show, this is not a personal vendetta against any particular group for OOC reasons, nor faction bias, or "winning cope". I have not lost any characters, nor even had them be injured (luckily) on either side. I intend to play with you all, and I have no beefs with anyone. Except with @Mullin. Fuck Mullin.
e) I do not want to bash, I want to solve. Please, if there are issues from the other factions that are cause to all of this, I wanna know. If there are things we are doing wrong, we should tell eachother instead of going around saying shit in discord and turning our gaze to the side when the people we criticize show up. This is the point of a conversation. If this thread gets nowhere it'll be pretty sad. This can be fixed. We need to stop going around it.
Now, onto the issues I have noticed. Keep in mind, please, these are OBSERVATIONS, not FACTS. I know stating this is redundant in a suggestion/discussion post, but some people just never seem to get it from my own personal experience, so I might as well. I will try and keep it compact so the points get across and you aren't reading here for six years, but it's not gonna be easy:
1) The (great majority of) Resistance/Rebels/Criminals are not roleplaying as neither Resistance, Rebels or Criminals.
Quite the strong, incriminating start to the post, I know. Especially after all I've said. This is the part where I mention my favourite word ever, when it comes down to roleplay: COHESION. Altogether with continuity, they are the two base pillars (yet not all of them!) to construct a character in fiction that can get remotely close to resembling a real being, be it human or otherwise. What cohesion demands of a character is a direct connection between their goals and their actions, such in a way that they do not conflict with eachother. And, in the case they do conflict, for said clash to be justified narratively in a way that it makes sense, given the character's psyche or background. All in all, it is the unification, or connection, of all the concepts the character means to represent, in a comprehensive, realistic way.
Now, what's this mean, without all the nerd shit?
It means that for a character (or entire factions, in this case) to be cohesive it needs to be portrayed accordingly to its expressed intent and its belonging in the world. I think it'll be better understood with some examples of what I found is NOT cohesive, in the server. I will be referring to everyone as 'armed resistance' for now:
- It is not cohesive for an armed resistance to engage in large scale armed warfare/direct frontal conflict, unless they are moving their plans onto a full-blown uprising phase. Which, as I understand, isn't the case here. What resistances are especially weak to is attrition, given they should not possess the resources their oppresors do. Especially in the context of the world of Half-Life 2. Yet I feel like the concept is completely misunderstood. Once all alarms are up, where do you run to? You run off map, because that is OOC safety, and sadly it seems there are OOC protections in play (more on point 2) but that wouldn't exist in real life. It makes no sense.
- It is not cohesive for an armed resistance (the hand of the people) to engage in acts that directly harm the populace or cause generalized fear or hurt (terrorism) directly or indirectly, OR TO ALLOW IT from other groups. With this I am not saying they should be goody-two-shoes; history proves that wrong. But what a resistance wishes to push is a cause. Or at least, they seek to obtain a benefit. Killing indiscriminately only causes sweeps, which fucks them and the people they're trying to defend far more than the pieces of gear they might scrap off of it (I still struggle to imagine how willingly you have to ignore roleplay, to kill IC, for gear, and act like nothing happened). Another example of this is perhaps RDT's bombing. It's perhaps the silliest shit I've seen yet, next to being told they also bombed a homeless shelter. Or trying to bomb several public buildings in several streets (it got stopped...) Like... Seriously. Is there some kind of bomb fetish? What is the practical utility of any of this? Even real life terrorist groups who DO aim to harm the citizenship of a nation are more subtle, as a big enough destabilization would warrant unprecedented death or a huntdown. It's just impractical. And by that same logic, if what others do can also hurt you, you'd want to not let it happen.
More of this on point 2), though...
- It is not cohesive for an armed resistance to walk around pretending to be an army, or act like they "own the place" with little to no consequence. I've seen so many rebels casually in full gear walking around the slums as my civ that it makes me question whether they understand the setting they're playing in at all. The point of the gamemode is that you lost. And there's an argument to be made for the legitimacy of fighting back like we see in the games. I've seen more sweeps caused by someone who is so blissfully careless and unaware of the concept of roleplaying as someone who is (allegedly) oppressed, than anything else. And they even feel entitled to not flee, rather hold their ground, and see how many people they take down, which is the cherry on the cake. Why? Why not just, flee, and wait for the heat to cool down? Why make it significantly worse when there is
no necessity for it? Again... Ties into point 2).
Just like these examples, there are many, many more. Everything that doesn't feel 'real' enough, that is 'devoid' of consideration for the environment of the character, minimizing emotions, ignoring context and setting in favour of... Other things we'll see in point 2... That is what not being cohesive brings. Sound familiar? Yes - that is the definition of "FailRP" - a concept that I was surprised to see it does not current exist in the current Guidelines & Rules (link). As well as Powergame, but again, more on that on the following point.
2) The Resistance/Rebels/Criminals are (allowedly) unfiltered/favoured OOC, and they get away with breaking plenty of rules (or tip-toeing around them), whereas other factions do not.
Yeah. I mean, it's pretty straightforward.
- While some might argue that "now that the PKs are for everyone it is a levelled ground", I personally think that's bullshit. I've heard from many people how time and time again resistance oriented players remake similar to near-identical characters, and remake entire groups under different names, with akin personalities, and same OOC connections. As it stands, you do this in any other faction, or at least the CP, and you're dewhitelisted. In fact, you go as far as any of the stuff you saw in point 1) (applied respectively to the CP perspective, of course) and you'll be blacklisted, do anything you'll find in here, and you'll outright be banned. How this goes unregulated for so many people to mention it, even rebels to admit it, and no action to be taken goes beyond me. This essentially means that one side's deaths are meaningless from a development standpoint, whereas the others' are the opposite. IC, it's supposed to be the protection team that has 'replaceable goons', yet, OOC, it's the resistance that behaves like that, on near suicide missions over petty stuff that is comparable to "you killed my girlfriend combine you will pay aaagh!" at some points (I.E - an all out assault on a protection team because they 'killed an important rebel' the day before, the other day... wasn't even anyone related). What's the point of a character's life if you just remake it under a different name? What's the point of John Rebel's glorious death if John Rebel Jr. shows up the day after to take his exactly place...? That's all kinds of Fail RP, from Metagame to Powergame to... Everything discussed prior.
- The characters seem like they're played more for OOC benefit than for IC benefit. To specify, I have heard (and seen) how most people just create characters to farm scripts. I've heard of the legendary tales of Adhesive duping, I've heard and seen how people run about like headless chickens to get to the loot in time. There is little to no RP involved. It is no wonder the characters end up being played off as discardable cannonfodder with so little investment. Again, I am speaking about the majority, I know there are some who are completely exempt from all of this. It's also eerie how it feels some goals are more OOCly set than ICly set, in tandem with what was talked about point one. Seems it's a norm to think that something might be 'cool', or might screw up 'X faction in particular', so let's do it, rather than putting reasoning behind it IC. Such as... The latest bombing. Not to add how awfully managed I think the whole script thing is. "Events" are rewarded with scripts, else noone goes, so I've been told. Despite there being a very explicit rule to roleplay looting downed bodies, I've seen people just near a corpse midfight and /charsearch to bolt it later. That's how little the roleplay matters. And it's sad.
- A whitelist alone is not going to fix this. I understand there has been a lot of time and effort put into making the 'canon' resistance circumvent these exact issues and establish an OOC filter to avoid them, much like one exists in the case of the CP. But the problem isn't so much in organization, or lack of direction, but in attitude. I am fairly confident the people allegedly guilty of doing all of what we've discussed (maybe I'm wrong) are well aware of the fact what they're doing isn't exactly right, but as there is no direct, stable punishment for it, and there is an excessive amount of hate towards resistance players (more on this later) it serves as perfect excuse to keep doing it. The water's perfect for these kind of near bacterial attitudes to sprout in it. The more the people do it, the more others do it, too. It's a cycle.
- Guilty silence. I have lost track of the amount of times these issues have been brought up in the discord, I've checked the forums plenty for them, too. Only very few people taking active part in the resistance speak up about this, and most because of their own status of immunity within the community. By remaining quiet, it's allowed to continue. And some favour off of that. That's all I gotta say there.
- I've not seen a lot of events, but it seems they all could be summed up as "combine lose and end up looking stupid and or defeated despite their best efforts and other side are either completely uninvolved yet somehow look like the victors or they deny any and all affiliation with the chaos caused.".
- Perhaps the most important subpoint in this... point, is that some actions seem premeditately (and, as sad as it is, accidentally sometimes) intended to hinder the fun of other collectives OOC. At the very least, there is little to no thought put behind it. I am actually not sure if this is fault of the Event Team or the players (since noone ever says whether it's staff's narrative machinations). But it conflicts directly with literally the first rule of the server and the community (link again). What roleplay does it bring for the citizens to blow up RDT and leave them like 2 days without OOCly being able to collect their rations, and the rubble to be cleared up in 1-2 workshifts, nevermind the IC excuse (and lack of consequence, of course, because apparently the CCA does more for starving citizens than the resis...) that might be behind it? What roleplay does it bring to say "let's flag and shoot this cop who's out of position in the CZ" for the cop, when they're finished off with no roleplay and a dubitous IC motive? Sure, you get the gear, but at what price? Do you not think about the 7th time you're gonna make every civvie wait looking at a wall in the housing block today as the 18th weekly inspection after yet another rank leader got shot out of the blue takes place? In the Civil Protection, it is part of the very application to agree to playing with the notion of, despite your role as 'antagonist', helping nurture nearby RP and not obstruct it. There are self-set rules for both OTA and CP to avoid making resistance roleplay unfun or impossible for the citizenry and anti-citizenry alike - hell, the slums are open access. Even in interrogation, there are ways to save the character off of certain death. Why is this OOC courtesy not returned? There are bad apples in every faction, this isn't exclusive to the resistance, but I'd be lying if I said the ratio wasn't much larger in the case of them.
3) We (the people) suck big time, and we don't really want to admit it.
I know we're a big community, but this is the one point I'm not targetting exclusively to the resistance players. I feel like I've already sent enough flak up in the air.
Every discussion that ends up so far as grazing these points turns into a shitfest. Some people don't even bother to bring up the points, they just bicker and complain incessantly. They sound spiteful. Insults fly around. Names. They're also unforgiving of past events, creating this turmoilish brew where it's only passive-aggressive words back and forth. I've seen more crying in the CP discord and on server-discussion of WN than I've seen in my remaining 10 years of HL2RP. But there's ways to bitch and cry that are actually useful. Pointing out how someone sucks or how shit someone is is completely useless. It solves nothing. You can bitch and cry and propose answers and solutions. It's not always the others' fault. Maybe we're missing something. Maybe we just don't talk enough? Maybe we can save this marriage, Johann.
I myself nearly fell into this trap of bitching for the sake of it until I realized that you people might listen, or correct me. Because maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe we all are, and we kinda need to tell eachother. We just all need to become better. The factions, sure. The characters, also. But the people prolly more importantly.
We can roleplay, but that takes effort, and some of us are lazy. We can do things, IC and OOC, as both players and staff, but we don't. It's easier to just go "lmao shit rebels", I guess. This singular point is likely solely the cause of everything. You can just use the format "lmao shit __" for everything mentioned in this post. It's tiring. And a bit shameful, in all honesty. I could've mentioned in this post many more things, such as the lack of balance in weapons' damage values, bla bla bla... None of that really matters. It does, but not as much as this. We can ask the devs to add remove or change a million things, but I really do believe this is a people problem. Either we change the chip or we don't.
Effort is necessary. Especially if you guys spend as many hours as you do in server. You're dedicating a lot of time to your own enjoyment, so it might as well be secured. And you might as well make sure the rest enjoy it equally, too. I can see a lot of people being like "lmao dont care im having fun loser", or "you're making a mountain out of a molehill", or "lmao what are u talking about" but I sincerely think I'm not. Maybe it'll even be labelled as a "schizo post". Or there'll be the typical funny comment of "do u even play on the server". Why yes, yes I do, more than I probably should. I'm bummed out not at all because of what I've described, but at the fact I've seen people I like and respect, on both sides, get bummed out. It's like a chain. Seeing them sad or annoyed about the state of the server or the loss of their characters is not fun for me. I've seen it happen one time too many. Good roleplayers too. Losing months of work over dumb shit. Admins needing to resort to voids, PK appeals showing up en masse, "TBC is bugged", "It wasn't deserved"... In the last week or so there's been 5 PK appeals, with probably more being private. I know there's not been a few out of the frustration of knowing nothing will be done to fix the root of the issue. Some others also didn't happen because of a mass void that happened. So the count would, in reality, probably be fairly higher. It shows how quick the situation's getting outta hand. Both for CPs and resis. It's so tabboo as a whole, this subject, it's crazy. Why can't we just try a little bit to adjust to one another and provide eachother what we want? Instead of seeing who stomps the other harder?
If we can't do it on our own accord, we need rules in place. A lot of them. And we need the people to actually enforce the already existing ones, as well as the new ones, more seriously. Because apparently being scared at the fact of being put facing a wall with a cone hat that reads "dunce" drives the human brain more than actually wishing for any degrees of improvement.
So what're your solutions, nerd?
IDK bro, I'm 20k characters into this giga rant and I think one can easily infer what must be acted upon.
- Rules in place to avoid the negativity.
- Rules in place to avoid the bad roleplay (or rather, the lack thereof).
- Harder enforcement of the already existing rules equally across the board.
- Cohesive directing of characters and factions aided by Event Team.
- Dialogue dialogue dialogue. If we don't talk this through and reach an agreement it won't ever get fixed. Respond. Type.
- Issues with the other factions to be also brought up by those who suffer them. I'm blind to a lot of things.
Thank you for coming to my ted talk
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