Willard Roleplay Atmosphere Discussion

[NaughtyNicholas]

Simply reward people who genuinely RP and you will see people more willing to risk it all and die. If someone goes through the actions to obtain something, reward them rather than just tell them that they actually have to have the scripts to create such an object.

Then again some people say that a con of death is “losing the backstory and progress of the character” which isn’t true. If your character’s story was good enough, your character will be remembered. Death should be the ending to a lot of stories which is just something we should accept rather than be scared of. It’s a tough pill to swallow but the point of roleplay is to create a good story which includes some sort of ending. Too many characters are dragged out for too long.

 

[FungletheBungle]

bad take as usual

Name one other bad take.

All my takes are as solid as steel, your takes are weak as the toilet paper you use.

 

[ItsLiam]

Name one other bad take.

LGBTQ+ Movement...

 

[FungletheBungle]

LGBTQ+ Movement...

 

[Rebel RP Philosopher]

Make the game more rouge like and PK's unappealable

Made a discussion about this

 

[SpookyWolf07]

I have not read most of this thread.
But honestly I don't need to, everything that has transpired is clear to me things have not changed since I have left.

Unfortunately I am not here to gloat or be happy about my actions when I left. Because who honestly cares? So rather than flex or yield to whatever reputation I have acquired since my last appearance, I will give my unwarranted opinion.

Willard's V2 environment has become such a "Play to Win" state for such a long time and it has festered on for so long I honestly don't think you can fix it at all. I personally advocate for two extreme solutions for how to fix this "Play to Win" problem. Unfortunately neither will be accepted at all. I'm not gonna bother as to why because I'll just explain my two positions.

ABOLISH PKS
Now Spooky you say. What the fuck are you on about now? Its quite simple. Abolish PKs and charunban all PK characters from Willard V2 and only V2. V2 has become such a massively gamey state that there's really no point in trying to recover any sense of a "serious environment". I have seen Willard's attempt to fix this and nearly every single time it has been negligeable. People always bitch about how unserious the server is for over 3 years and it has barely changed, save people have become more cynical over the years and just don't give a fuck anymore. I still see the stephen sticker and the fog is coming joke shit. This is the more platable option for this community and honestly won't change the atmosphere in my opinion anyways that much. You don't even need to change any coding, the RP quality will remain the same.

ABSOLUTE PKS
The more epic and unfortunately undoable option. I call it undoable because it would require the entire server to accept that character death is inevitable. And when I mean Absolute PKs, I mean Absolute PKs. You starve to death its a PK, you fall off of a ladder during S2K its a PK. You are a CP and then you get fucking shot up by rebels in the plaza itself, it is a PK. You connect to the server and are instantly attacked (okay maybe not but you get the idea). In essence I couldn't care if you were John Retard or Pathfinder or the OTA or the event character that isn't supposed to die right away. You die in RP you die IC no if ands or fucking buts about it. Now I don't think anyone really wants this option, but it would have two effects, it would either deter all the shitRP away or it would accelerate it either way you're sorta gambling with this option what it'll do.

IN CONCLUSION
This was honestly a huge waste of my time. I perchance rewrite or even make my own thread about my solutions to Willard's RP atmosphere but I honestly couldn't care less. I only frankly came back briefly because people kept DMing me about Willard and felt an inkling to throw my pessimistic two cents here. Oh well, can't wait to get warned or some shit for this post.

However, if you do take my post seriously, I only have one request. Don't freak out too hard, this is just a Garry's Mod Serious RP server.
ADDENDUM: If you do take either suggestion seriously I demand absolute credit for it. No Negotiations.

 

[ItsLiam]

If I've learned one thing about Willard, to incite change you have to do it yourself or have a HOS/CM/whatever high ass staff member do it for you. suggestions don't work, there are too little devs, etc.

 

[Ekrell]

A diesease without a cure. That being said, Baldur's Gate 3 is fucking amazing you should try it if you haven't.

 

[SpookyWolf07]

If I've learned one thing about Willard, to incite change you have to do it yourself or have a HOS/CM/whatever high ass staff member do it for you. suggestions don't work, there are too little devs, etc.

This is sort of the main issue, and my biggest problem when I was Narrative Team. I won't get too deep into it since its both late and I frankly don't know what I'm allowed to say (Cabal is watching me rn I escaped containment); But I can state I was highly disappointed with what I was allowed and not allowed to do. And very disappointed with both the lack of power I had, and also how much pressure was placed upon me to do things I had absolutely no power over. I honestly wished I had applied for Staff instead of Narrative Team but considering I am blacklisted from NT and my ability to give a shit is very low. I highly doubt you'll see me in any meaningful position anytime soon.

Otherwise in some alternative timeline I would make the promise that I couldn't keep. Good luck is all I say.

 

[SpookyWolf07]

A diesease without a cure. That being said, Baldur's Gate 3 is fucking amazing you should try it if you haven't.

Another reason as to why I think its all fucked. Even the CT members here are fucking blackpilled on how to solve this crisis.

While I was still unfortunately still up, I came up with another solution. We simply ban the RPers who don't fit Willard's Standards or create a whitelist.

 

[ItsLiam]

This is sort of the main issue, and my biggest problem when I was Narrative Team. I won't get too deep into it since its both late and I frankly don't know what I'm allowed to say (Cabal is watching me rn I escaped containment); But I can state I was highly disappointed with what I was allowed and not allowed to do. And very disappointed with both the lack of power I had, and also how much pressure was placed upon me to do things I had absolutely no power over. I honestly wished I had applied for Staff instead of Narrative Team but considering I am blacklisted from NT and my ability to give a shit is very low. I highly doubt you'll see me in any meaningful position anytime soon.

Otherwise in some alternative timeline I would make the promise that I couldn't keep. Good luck is all I say.

I was Rebel Representative for a good month or two and besides the complaining, occasional opinion I was allowed to give and a staff meeting I was basically a player with access to the Lead-Relay chat.

I'm glad Robert, Neonity, and whoever else is in charge of the system noticed the problems with it and how we can't do anything besides complaining.

However, I disagree with some things they say because apparently it's up to the Rebel Reps to come up with solutions, and whilst in the perfect world that would be dealt with, I doubt it will be. This is due to my own experience, the one of my other Rebel Reps, booile, etc.

But... Time will tell. All I know is that far too little people have power to incite change, and everyone (including me) is a doomposter.

 

[ItsLiam]

A diesease without a cure. That being said, Baldur's Gate 3 is fucking amazing you should try it if you haven't.

Baldur's Gate is exactly what we should try to strive for as server... CT should play the game, study the narrative and try to create their own version of the game in Willard.

Me, personally, I've been doing workshifts DnD style for a while now. I always try to bring a narrative, I let the people make decisions that will/will not affect the outcome, perhaps they will even get injured or whatever if they make the wrong choices, roll the wrong things, etc.

 

[Robert]

ABOLISH PKS
Now Spooky you say. What the fuck are you on about now? Its quite simple. Abolish PKs and charunban all PK characters from Willard V2 and only V2. V2 has become such a massively gamey state that there's really no point in trying to recover any sense of a "serious environment". I have seen Willard's attempt to fix this and nearly every single time it has been negligeable. People always bitch about how unserious the server is for over 3 years and it has barely changed, save people have become more cynical over the years and just don't give a fuck anymore. I still see the stephen sticker and the fog is coming joke shit. This is the more platable option for this community and honestly won't change the atmosphere in my opinion anyways that much. You don't even need to change any coding, the RP quality will remain the same.

ABSOLUTE PKS
The more epic and unfortunately undoable option. I call it undoable because it would require the entire server to accept that character death is inevitable. And when I mean Absolute PKs, I mean Absolute PKs. You starve to death its a PK, you fall off of a ladder during S2K its a PK. You are a CP and then you get fucking shot up by rebels in the plaza itself, it is a PK. You connect to the server and are instantly attacked (okay maybe not but you get the idea). In essence I couldn't care if you were John Retard or Pathfinder or the OTA or the event character that isn't supposed to die right away. You die in RP you die IC no if ands or fucking buts about it. Now I don't think anyone really wants this option, but it would have two effects, it would either deter all the shitRP away or it would accelerate it either way you're sorta gambling with this option what it'll do.

This is my first reply to this entire post but only comment I have to really make here on this above section is that this is two extremes, both of which I don't see working.

Abolishing PKs for example does the opposite of the current problem- rather than people playing to win, they will suddenly do anything and everything out of sheer boredom because there is nothing to lose. They can respawn again and again without punishment and cause absolute chaos and destruction- and everyone will do it because again "What is there to lose?". When nothing is lost, everything is meaningless. Also becomes a doomsday timer as everyone will slowly be drained of their life as they get burned out by watching the same chaos by the same characters day in and day out, over and over again with no differences of any kind.

Absolute PKs amplifies the stated issue tenfold. That being pay 2 win. When you put all chips on the table 24/7 in a way that whatever you do is basically death, you will have to do anything and everything to win, draining people more and more as they play as they constant lose character after character. hundreds of hours poured in and drained within the lamest 1 second they can think of. Lots of gear, most heavily armoured person falls off a ladder in a fight? Well RIP all their time spent. And knowing how people would react already, they would go to the point of forcing a map switch and demanding change within a mere few days because no one wants to lose their progress.

You are fighting a double edged sword and both extremes are destructive to the playerbase and face extreme flaws to the max. One amplifies the P2W mentality tenfold, the other removes it but creates a sense of utter lack of care because there is nothing to do nor lose, just blow up the City a million times over to get a kick out of killing again and again.

In the end, CityRP as a whole is sorta designed to be a stale state where there is always Combine and Rebels and that both sides should have equal opportunity to affect one another while also being fair. Of course, that is not we got at the moment as we can tell from the P2W mentality that comes from our current harsh PKs which does already prove in itself that Absolute PKs will be a horrible idea. Instead, the path is to find a middle ground between harsh and leniency. Aka making current PKs more lenient but not too lenient to the point nothing matters.

Which is being worked on by the way for those wondering- just strangely taking a long time for unknown reasons.

Outside of that, Willard does indeed face lots of other quality RP issues which have varied throughout its 3 years of existence, its been up and down more times than I count, and was at its worst probably a few months back. Climbing back up once more but as per the pattern that can go straight back down at any moment.

 

[SpookyWolf07]

I was Rebel Representative for a good month or two and besides the complaining, occasional opinion I was allowed to give and a staff meeting I was basically a player with access to the Lead-Relay chat.

I'm glad Robert, Neonity, and whoever else is in charge of the system noticed the problems with it and how we can't do anything besides complaining.

However, I disagree with some things they say because apparently it's up to the Rebel Reps to come up with solutions, and whilst in the perfect world that would be dealt with, I doubt it will be. This is due to my own experience, the one of my other Rebel Reps, booile, etc.

But... Time will tell. All I know is that far too little people have power to incite change, and everyone (including me) is a doomposter.

We all became doomposters for one reason or another. Although I won't post names about who, I've noticed a clear total acceptance of absolute staff corruption. I frankly don't really care anymore because in the end, the charade is broken, all that's left to do now is to either pick up the pieces or accept your fate as it is now.

I'll leak a bit of my own motivation for ultimately being getting removed/leaving of my own volition. It mostly came down to my personal disagreements with the rest of the NT on how limp-dicked everyone was except for RedHotGinger (who I frankly thought was a flipflopper himself). Unfortunately at the same time I had too much IRL issues to really be of useful input except being a negative fucking asshole to everyone so that didn't end up helping the team either. Eventually however my breaking point was watching the staff team blatantly bypass the NT (minus the CT Coordinators who were apparently also in on it) and immediately went forward with the Loyalist Arc I was not a fan of. I then proceeded to do some very bad things that I only mildly regret on account that I could have at least had the decency to resign before I leaked the document unto another random discord.

Oh well, in the end it doesn't fucking matter. People on Willard have two paths it seems, they either keep playing this server or become a rule-breaker like me.

 

[ItsLiam]

We all became doomposters for one reason or another. Although I won't post names about who, I've noticed a clear total acceptance of absolute staff corruption. I frankly don't really care anymore because in the end, the charade is broken, all that's left to do now is to either pick up the pieces or accept your fate as it is now.

I'll leak a bit of my own motivation for ultimately being getting removed/leaving of my own volition. It mostly came down to my personal disagreements with the rest of the NT on how limp-dicked everyone was except for RedHotGinger (who I frankly thought was a flipflopper himself). Unfortunately at the same time I had too much IRL issues to really be of useful input except being a negative fucking asshole to everyone so that didn't end up helping the team either. Eventually however my breaking point was watching the staff team blatantly bypass the NT (minus the CT Coordinators who were apparently also in on it) and immediately went forward with the Loyalist Arc I was not a fan of. I then proceeded to do some very bad things that I only mildly regret on account that I could have at least had the decency to resign before I leaked the document unto another random discord.

Oh well, in the end it doesn't fucking matter. People on Willard have two paths it seems, they either keep playing this server or become a rule-breaker like me.

I do agree that the whole C8 map shit was the most unfun time I've ever had on the server besides two encounters, one of which was with some cop who came to chill in the sewers with us (I was considered locally to be the anti-christ by the CPs) and when I shot some cops before forcing another cop to heal them with MY equipment so they can feel the sheer disrespect of the situation.

The metro arc was great for two things, citizen RP actually feeling like we were in a Combine Regime, and no OTA.

The fact it got cut short, and Rebels were threatened with getting wiped if we tried attacking CP's, was absolutely blasphemous and really demotivating especially considering the C8 shit afterwards.

 

[SpookyWolf07]

This is my first reply to this entire post but only comment I have to really make here on this above section is that this is two extremes, both of which I don't see working.

Abolishing PKs for example does the opposite of the current problem- rather than people playing to win, they will suddenly do anything and everything out of sheer boredom because there is nothing to lose. They can respawn again and again without punishment and cause absolute chaos and destruction- and everyone will do it because again "What is there to lose?". When nothing is lost, everything is meaningless. Also becomes a doomsday timer as everyone will slowly be drained of their life as they get burned out by watching the same chaos by the same characters day in and day out, over and over again with no differences of any kind.

Absolute PKs amplifies the stated issue tenfold. That being pay 2 win. When you put all chips on the table 24/7 in a way that whatever you do is basically death, you will have to do anything and everything to win, draining people more and more as they play as they constant lose character after character. hundreds of hours poured in and drained within the lamest 1 second they can think of. Lots of gear, most heavily armoured person falls off a ladder in a fight? Well RIP all their time spent. And knowing how people would react already, they would go to the point of forcing a map switch and demanding change within a mere few days because no one wants to lose their progress.

You are fighting a double edged sword and both extremes are destructive to the playerbase and face extreme flaws to the max. One amplifies the P2W mentality tenfold, the other removes it but creates a sense of utter lack of care because there is nothing to do nor lose, just blow up the City a million times over to get a kick out of killing again and again.

In the end, CityRP as a whole is sorta designed to be a stale state where there is always Combine and Rebels and that both sides should have equal opportunity to affect one another while also being fair. Of course, that is not we got at the moment as we can tell from the P2W mentality that comes from our current harsh PKs which does already prove in itself that Absolute PKs will be a horrible idea. Instead, the path is to find a middle ground between harsh and leniency. Aka making current PKs more lenient but not too lenient to the point nothing matters.

Which is being worked on by the way for those wondering- just strangely taking a long time for unknown reasons.

Outside of that, Willard does indeed face lots of other quality RP issues which have varied throughout its 3 years of existence, its been up and down more times than I count, and was at its worst probably a few months back. Climbing back up once more but as per the pattern that can go straight back down at any moment.

I have a million fucking problems with everything stated here.

First of all, half of the WN playerbase whether we like to admit it or not is only influenced by scripts, while the other half or minority is influenced by character development. I only state abolishing PKs because I know damn well this server isn't gonna recover its serious aspects in this current iteration unless someone makes some damn changes. I know damn well nobody wants Absolute PKs and I know damn well Abolishing PKs won't happen. I'm only pissed because more than half of my experience on this CityRP was something I'd see on a DarkRP server and seldom did I feel immersed.

In the end, CityRP as a whole is sorta designed to be a stale state where there is always Combine and Rebels and that both sides should have equal opportunity to affect one another while also being fair. Of course, that is not we got at the moment as we can tell from the P2W mentality that comes from our current harsh PKs which does already prove in itself that Absolute PKs will be a horrible idea. Instead, the path is to find a middle ground between harsh and leniency. Aka making current PKs more lenient but not too lenient to the point nothing matters.

This in particular fucking infuriates me when I hear this statement from the Staff Team. CityRP is a setting, and it should have a narrative that supports that setting and perhaps maybe even escape that setting; I have stated this many times both when I was a player and NT that we should transfer V2's ending to a cool sick ass narrative that breaks the monotony of the endless C24 arcs and take us to a whole new fucking idea. I want to see more Combine V. Combine arcs, more Gray or even Black and White Morality. I want to see Circuses and shit in the City. I want to see the Outlands have a bazaar. Things like that, shit that has meaning, and point to it. Unfortunately it seems IXHL2RP is a dying horse we keep beating into the ground and I don't know why I bother to engage in this any further than I already did.

Outside of that, Willard does indeed face lots of other quality RP issues which have varied throughout its 3 years of existence, its been up and down more times than I count, and was at its worst probably a few months back. Climbing back up once more but as per the pattern that can go straight back down at any moment.

Unfortuantely this was also my breaking point and its unlikely I'll come back. I don't feel like promises are ever kept on this community, they go through and then backtrack every single fucking time I'm here. I'm tired of broken promises and I'm tired of tiptoeing this piss poor line of whatever this shit is now.

 

[ultima]

beans

 

[George]

I'm not reading this

 

[Lost Coast Chanties]

tl;dr?

 

[ford-michigan]

Don't blame the player. Blame the system

Willard's system is made for people to want to win. I'll divide it in two sides.
(I have civil protection whitelist, and play it frequently, and I also main rebel, so I have absolutely no bias)

CIVIL PROTECTION:
Civil protection, while not losing as much as rebels do upon dying (Unless you're a rank leader), DO lose a bunch of progress upon death. This is what understandably makes them want to have their characters survive, and therefore PLAY TO WIN, altho, precisely for the specified above, because they don't lose as much as rebels, there are many players in the faction that sometimes do play to lose (Including myself).
Losing consequences:
-De-ranking
-Losing all your backstory
-Losing all your credits
-Losing all your character relations
This can take away from one week to months, or even years in the case of rank leaders.

REBELS:
They're pretty much obligated to grind, and incentivized to do so (The whole system is around that, with lootcrates and the crafting menu). A top tier rebel will have spent from 1 month to years in their character. That's why they're almost obligated to play to win, and prepare ambushes that give them the full advantage over the situation. Playing to lose is punished with death and the loss of months of progress with a character.
Losing consequences:
-Completely starting over from the beggining
-Having to re-grind you way up
-You lose every conection, and backstory
-You lose every single script and skill.
OVERWATCH TRANSHUMAN ARM:
OTA are non-characters that don't lose anything upon death. They shouldn't play to win, right? Well, in my opinion there's a 50% on this. IF OTA don't play to win, then rebels will always win, and that's not fun for anyone. OTA should play to win, but have the dissadvantage (Like that event in the lighthouse with tons of rebels against groups of 8 OTA), causing them to win in some situations where rebels can't win even with the advantage, and lose in others.
There are no losing consequences.

I thought OTA got PKed on death?