[Poll] C24 or Another Map?

[NIXeighteen]

If I'm honest, I'd like C24 to downgrade again. The previous version was so much better and held so much more feeling. From a personal point of view that is.

 

[Atle]

We use c24 as a "base" which wont change in the near future but we're pushing for more map switch events, one of which is coming up soon after we've got rebel WL sorted

 

[Aspect™]

This has been discussed before, and it's been said that Willard will not be changing main maps, at all.

That being said... City 8 my beloved...

 

[Merlinsclaw]

As others have said, atmosphere is incredibly important. If you have a corrupt, slimy City then people are going to fall into that atmosphere and love it. It worked incredibly well at the start of I17.

That being said though, I don't think having 10 or 11 months out of the year be solely on C24 is healthy. Another year, maybe a year and a half, and people are going to start ripping their hair out. Month mini-breaks or whatever don't really solve the issue either.

You can always come back to C24, remember that.

City Eight (My beloved)

 

[Ruairidh]

That being said... City 8 my beloved...

PLEASE MAKE IT C8 PLEASE

 

[Rabid]

I don't agree "the map doesn't matter" when being set in C24 have been a repeatedly quoted reason for why certain things can't happen IC, because "Its a loyalist city".

People enjoyed the I17 event because that went out the window and people could do more with it.

 

[RedHotGinger]

quoted reason for why certain things can't happen IC, because "Its a loyalist city".

Example?

 

[Merlinsclaw]

Example?

Plenty. Dating as far back as a year or more.

I could probably grab all the screenshots of you mentioning C24 as a loyalist city, or even complaining that it got removed as one. And that's just you.

The point is: "Oh you, can't have corruption, or low stability, or the city turning into shit, BECAUSE it's a loyalist city or w/e" The general consesus was that these things couldn't happen because of that and why the status got removed. Not like it changed much though.

Take it from yourself back in April:

City RP is at its best when it isn't secure, when things can go wild or in any direction, and when the Combine don't have the City by the balls and prevent anything from happening.

 

[RedHotGinger]

City 17, 8 and 24 are all secure. Nothing changes between them in that respect. Its also worth noting Im pretty sure I said that in response to a plan to randomly start district uprisings via admins.

 

[Vulpes Callida]

City RP is at its best when it isn't secure, when things can go wild or in any direction, and when the Combine don't have the City by the balls and prevent anything from happening.

Not a malintentioned question, just legitimately curious - what is being prevented from happening, currently? From an IC and or OOC perspective. Just not sure what you mean with this one. After all, I haven't been here for long.

With all of the recent happenings I'd wager the only thing we're really short of is a full blown uprising, in C24; I've seen a lot of different happenings in it in terms of RP variety. But I doubt many people want that, tbh (god knows I don't). It wouldn't really make much sense, but... Hey. Who knows.

What things are you "forbidden" from carrying out atm?

 

[Merlinsclaw]

City 17, 8 and 24 are all secure. Nothing changes between them in that respect. Its also worth noting Im pretty sure I said that in response to a plan to randomly start district uprisings via admins.

Let me keep it real with you chief.

Loremap or w/e means nothing. C24 was having bombings and riots every day and it was stable. People say it has some major impact if a City is stable, unstable, or w/e. It really doesn't.

Gameplay and Lore have a fairly big disconnect for the most part in Willard.

Not a malintentioned question, just legitimately curious - what is being prevented from happening, currently? From an IC and or OOC perspective. Just not sure what you mean with this one. After all, I haven't been here for long.

With all of the recent happenings I'd wager the only thing we're really short of is a full blown uprising, in C24; I've seen a lot of different happenings in it in terms of RP variety. But I doubt many people want that, tbh (god knows I don't). It wouldn't really make much sense, but... Hey. Who knows.

What things are you "forbidden" from carrying out atm?

Being stuck on C24 forever prevents us from changing to and exploring interesting and unique atmospheres and settings.

I want to be in City Eight where yakuza gangs run half the City, clubs act as hubs for organized crime, cops are working for said gangsters, some CP detectives are running around solving murders, people are hitting up xenian fight pits and fight clubs, and the crowded streets are filled with fish markets and crazy day-to-day events that cops barely care.

I want to be in Industrial Seventeen. Where class warfare runs rampant between CWU members and the general population, we see crazy drugs, cops are dirty, and CCA members are dirty themselves that hit up the local rave spots.

I want to be in a Combine Frontier City in America. The Combine's presence is minimal. Transhuman Rangers keep law and order outside of the walls. Combine Ranches dot the landscape where Ranches bring in Xenian beasts in and out of the walls of the Outpost City. Things are wild and one minor-push could send things into a spiral.

Point being, interesting settings such as those listed above couldn't all just be done in C24. You can't just go "oh, well. do that on C24". It wouldn't make much sense nor would it be possible to achieve. But you could explore these settings and have interesting gameplay changes bar the standard 'le loyalist city rp' that we've been doing for the last year.

Now you could explore these settings via week-month long events but, inevitably, you just end up returning to City Twenty-Four which is boring. While it could be interesting for C24 to act as a 'hub' that dynamically changed from events, expeditions, and the like, it's never going to happen because of how incredibly hard it's been to change any aspect about City RP on C24.

 

[ShadoWiz4rd]

Wait for v5 because Atle is never ever gonna switch from c24.

mfer bes bring back our park

 

[Vulpes Callida]

[FAIR POINT]

I see! ty, btw.

I don't dislike the idea, and I'd be up for some of the stuff you propose. But I have a main gripe with what you're saying, and that is it feels far too fandom-y at times (if that makes sense?) to the point it starts to distance itself too far from the main precepts that make the universe appealing in the first place. Lemme explain why.

I've noticed this not so much on the examples you give me (although there's a fair amount of hints in it) but especially in the World Map. It's full with a lot of believable stuff for what would be a post-cascades Earth, but equally, there is a lot of other stuff that feels like it belongs in a Warhammer 40K or Halo novel (or even tumblr honestly) and couldn't stray further from what in my eyes makes the universe what it is.

There's a lot of examples but I'll use two of the ones that hit closer to home for me: City Seventy Two (Barcelona) and City Fifty Nine (Madrid). I've been living in the country for twenty five years and studied it and its history enough to warrant a somewhat fair explanation...

- On one hand, the history of City Seventy Two (Barcelona) makes complete sense. Its mediterranean climate and foresty surroundings would make a prime hotspot for xenian life, yet its positioning and population would've at least warranted a try from the Union to make it work, eventually leading to its instability and downfall. There is also some poetry in making the city that prides on always standing through dire times against all odds, fall. This is an example of a realistic, universe-fitting story.

- On the other hand, the history behind City Fifty Nine (Madrid) seems to pretty much gather every stereotype about Spanish culture and its history and liquidify it into a caricaturesque, burlesque and incredibly over-the-top (even a little racist, or insulting, to me...) fanwrite that, as we say here, "huele a rancio" (smells odd). By this I mean it's obvious it's just a condensation of loose information about Spanish history by and for people who are clearly out of touch with its cultural antics. Just someone who saw a documentary about the civil war and Andalusan folklore and thought "yeah, it's definitely like that...!"

What I mean to say is that we should be careful on making settings seem "cool" through the exaggeration of any factors. Be it local culture, or the happenings that might happen within it (gigantic xenian monsters and DUNE-like sandsoarers, for example). Something doesn't have to be "incredibly different" and "standoffish" to be "cool", there is fun in mundanity. Moreso, there is fun in cohesion. Not only that, you can make something more "out there" while still respecting its core.

For example, for me, Tokyo (City 8) wouldn't be run by yakuza. That's yet another stereotype. Yakuza are a touchy subject in Japan and they've been forbidden and gone for many years. It's like making a City in Italy ran by the Cosa Nostra. It's just what someone who doesn't really get it would write.
However, I do see City 8 being extremely hostile and classist toward foreigners. Japan is already a very elitist (and racist) country, and, were the happenings of HL1+2 to go down, I'm pretty sure they'd resent the western world even more.

Geneva itself (City Twenty-Four) is half-victim of this, but given how it is a haven for important figures in real life (also a tax one) I can see bureaucracy creeping into the setting. The whole 'loyalism' meme is a little too overdone there but it could be a clear consequence of the establishment of a ruling elite. So for me it leans more towards the realistic side of stuff.

TL;DR? Let's stop trying to find settings that are only "superficially" interesting "on paper", and instead make settings that are engaging on their own accord. From what I heard, no matter the ambience of i17, people really didn't like that. (I didn't partake).

Oh, and, I'm not criticizing those stories. They are fine as stories, and very much seem like optional flavour reads for me. Even in the cases I point out I think they can be a fun idea and no matter how silly they might seem some are a stellar read. But the moment you make a story into a playable setting, you're materializing it, and thus you have to be a little more careful.

EDIT: I'd be okay with map changes to explore different things, as I've said. In fact voted in that favour. Just pointed out the two main issues I see with the maps: one, how they're an excuse a lot of times, and another, how the executions fall flat due to what I stated in this post here.
(in my experience in previous servers)

 

[0xNiklas]

T4's bully T6's

That is dogshit. T6 can literally bully and attack T4. They can be only authorised a terminal verdict by FL of CP and CCA. T6 provides so much playroom to bully the lower tiers.
What I seen is CCA is right now like inactive or won't doing anything. And those people who are there. Are lower Tiers who try to help or give RP to people, but people just don't care or deny it

 

[Deleted member 2717]

From what I heard, no matter the ambience of i17, people really didn't like that.

The i17 event was great for the first week, whilst people really leaned into the setting we were given, and it was a whole fresh aspect.
The reason opinions changed post week 1 is because at the end of week one, there was a big event that uprooted the corrupt CCA and threw the event on it's head. (The reason why is it's own beast but yeah)

This destroyed the atmosphere that had been set up for that one week and whilst there were efforts by CP leads and the CT at the time to try and fix things OOC, we couldn't just fully retcon it, and so it was kinda stuck in this half-limbo where the cartel had been overthrown but it was still corrupt except all the corrupt cops were killed but you could totally still be corrupt.

And so, most people decided to play it safe, and play how they do in C24. Which is why weeks two and three were uh- boring.

People enjoyed the i17 event. The i17 event was stupid fun. It just ended after week 1 and we forgot to map change for two weeks after.

 

[John Rico]

HL2rp is more than 10 years old, it's amazing to me that there is so much pushback still to any change that aims to change the archaic formula of city roleplay. It's always the players fucking each other up, but it's irritating that staff will take that as the excuse to leave the setting unchanged.

I want to be in a Combine Frontier City in America. The Combine's presence is minimal. Transhuman Rangers keep law and order outside of the walls. Combine Ranches dot the landscape where Ranches bring in Xenian beasts in and out of the walls of the Outpost City. Things are wild and one minor-push could send things into a spiral.

To piggyback on this because it probably is the easiest example: a frontier city anywhere where there will be a constant danger to the whole population (the world map has plenty of regions that are described like this, but they are useless unless the SS team decide to do anything with them), and I'm talking every possible danger imaginable, hordes of antlions like it's a Starship Troopers movie, the Xenian infection thing from HLA, quasi-state factions prowling in the outlands outside the walls (if we have the most cliché of Russian factions in that Nova Soviet Union army I don't see why we can't introduce anything more creative a la Fallout factions).

Point being that the situation is so dire that the formula has to shift when even the lowest of the citizens becomes involved in the overall narrative because every worker has to be conscripted constantly to fight for the survival of the city, with Civil Protection and Overwatch being unable to cope because they have to figure out how to keep the boat afloat while being the autocratic presence of the city.

Instead we have C24, no event can really become a game-changer since the whole lore of the city means it's status quo central. What outside danger can possibly come to the city that is in the middle of the core territory of Combine occupation? Staff seems to be hell bent in keeping the setting that makes it so that the biggest server-wide they can produce is a famine, an infestation or a freak cold snap, what else can you possibly come up with?

 

[0xNiklas]

My RP I am having here was

1. Join ISOM
2. Become NCO of ISOM
3. Surviving a Bombing
4. Create MAA and become Commander
5.Empty Promises and no help from CT, Staff or CCA making it look like a wannabe OTA and CP mixture and everyone hating it for OOC (Idk)
6.Reforms of MAA because CT realised no help from CT or said people won't help the MAA and also wanting a leadership change
7. I abdicted and demoted to recruit, because City Administrator mad at me ICly ( I love you Noodle ^^) while all I did is being beaten up by CPs and OTA( yes) and called out by MoE for corruption
8. Bootcamp RP then following C40 Event, where now Leadership used the best Tactic an average HL2RPer can use. Run straight to the enemy while they bomb, shell and use LMGs on you. I survived and get 2 medals although I got 4 medals earned (idk)
9. Become Depressed and hated by High Tier Loyalist for trying to provide RP for my MAA boys and trying to get things in flow
10. Nearly become TIer-5 and join in I17 the HHA( Hamilton, Hoxworth and Aalto) only one who fucking dies while Culture fucks off with his character and from the server with a minimal warning and ban
11. Mad about it PK Appeal and denied!
12. New Character and trying to be the better

I hate Willard -> Everything over the last few 4 months.

 

[Rabid]

HL2rp is more than 10 years old, it's amazing to me that there is so much pushback still to any change that aims to change the archaic formula of city roleplay. It's always the players fucking each other up, but it's irritating that staff will take that as the excuse to leave the setting unchanged.

Past a certain point, I can't entirely blame them though - and I say this as someone who supports shaking things up.

There's no actual pressure to change anything permenantly because the current setup (however maligned by some) works. People are playing, numbers are relatively good and steady. That's what matters when it comes to running a community like this, at the end of the day, and I don't even mean that as a slight - its just fact. You don't want to make more work for yourself than is neccesary.

Also all of these cool and funky novel settings only last as long as you can keep whatever makes them funky and novel happening. That initial "oh this is cool!" doesn't last forever and it can very easily become just as stale as anything else - only you might not have a lot of the fallback you do with a regular CityRP setting.

That being said.

You don't have to reinvent the wheel to make CityRP interesting. You just have to let doors be opened, which can't be done consistently in C24.

 

[John Rico]

Also all of these cool and funky novel settings only last as long as you can keep whatever makes them funky and novel happening. That initial "oh this is cool!" doesn't last forever and it can very easily become just as stale as anything else - only you might not have a lot of the fallback you do with a regular CityRP setting.

For sure, but what I consider valuable beyond that is the possibility of things being shaken up is always there whenever your server is becoming stale, considering you have a wider choice of events to throw at your players to entertain them. If the plan is to have a quasi-rotation of maps with these SS week-long events, it's the perfect opportunity to experiment with the setting, since I feel like both C8 and i17 were mostly just changes in scenery with really cautious changes in the factions dynamics.

 

[Appetite Ruining Kebab]

clearly the answer is to go to city 14

clearly the overarching narrative we require is the crack epidemic (citizens love the crack)