We dont beat up the CWU/CMRU Enough.

[Bi-Em 2.0]

From EX-CWU Worker here during Jack Knight time as CWU LEAD:

CWU Faction used to be burn-out party for all who decided to be involved in, and I can't stress enough how many times our "short sessions to do a workshift or two" turned into hours long sessions due to "Oh hey this happend, YOU MUST GO THERE AND FIX IT".

Here are some examples:
- Deadline orders one after another [Terminal 6 era]
- CWU being targeted for scripts.
- CPs demanding our attention and full commitment to their orders any time any where.
- Lack of patience
- Constant events where CWU had to get involved, which also blocked us from doing our regular workshifts.
- Constant nagging from shop owners and their own side of bullshittery that made some of us rip our hair out, especially Knight.
- New workers not understanding anything, even tho instructions were very clear.
- People joining to either steal or abuse the terminal [We had that happen few times].
- IC Interviews that took quite a while to get through.
- Admins popping in with CWU characters and taking command. [Don't ask me about this one, it was quite a while ago].

We had a LOT to deal with back then and good number of people I knew quit the faction, myself included. I don't know how things are currently in CWU, but I can imagine that things had calmed down a good bit by now.

So instead of trying to push this "We must do oppression beacuse it is half life 2" playstyle, how about we decide not to do that, and only punish when somebody fucks up or does something that is worth the punishment?

Let the faction take this nice breather and enjoyment of not having to take LOAs every two or three weeks.

 

[Bi-Em 2.0]

I also forgot to include the countless times where our warehouse and equipment were either stolen or destroyed in "I am rebel I will break shit for no reason" moments.

We had our office area and storages fire-bombed atlest twice in one month I believe.

Also lets not mention the "enjoyment" of Infestation events occuring, when we had zero Infestation Specialist on or available.

 

[Botulism]

I mean, we did reach a point where CPs would actually walk into the CWU and ask some random worker to make them something unimportant, or get PK'd and lose the character. That was a really bad problem.

Those thoughts still linger in some of the workers, memorially. It actively hurt the faction and its entertainment value due to how widepsread it became, than it had inspired fear from the Combine actively being portrayed as The Combine.

Yes I would prefer the Combine being more totalitarian but not actively genociding the CWU because some i5 - i3 came in and demanded that if they don't make some bullets for them or something, they get incinerated. It's not fun and makes playing the server a stress strain.

Oh yeah, random corrupt nerds getting an excuse to powertrip and PK a civil worker is lame as shit, but some more beatings accompanied with a purge-lite (not killing everyone, but yknow, a proper cleansing of every disloyal CWU worker. Discplining and charging everyone involved in any anti-civil activity, a bunch of show-trials, maybe one or two executions of the worst offenders) would do great to stimulate RP. I feel like a lot of CPs are scared to even try to prosecute or look into any instances of corruption or rebellion in the unions because they don't want to rustle players' feathers.

Last thing I'd wanna see is someone losing their character because a corrupt cop didn't get his way though.

 

[Botulism]

From EX-CWU Worker here during Jack Knight time as CWU LEAD:

CWU Faction used to be burn-out party for all who decided to be involved in, and I can't stress enough how many times our "short sessions to do a workshift or two" turned into hours long sessions due to "Oh hey this happend, YOU MUST GO THERE AND FIX IT".

Here are some examples:
- Deadline orders one after another [Terminal 6 era]
- CWU being targeted for scripts.
- CPs demanding our attention and full commitment to their orders any time any where.
- Lack of patience
- Constant events where CWU had to get involved, which also blocked us from doing our regular workshifts.
- Constant nagging from shop owners and their own side of bullshittery that made some of us rip our hair out, especially Knight.
- New workers not understanding anything, even tho instructions were very clear.
- People joining to either steal or abuse the terminal [We had that happen few times].
- IC Interviews that took quite a while to get through.
- Admins popping in with CWU characters and taking command. [Don't ask me about this one, it was quite a while ago].

We had a LOT to deal with back then and good number of people I knew quit the faction, myself included. I don't know how things are currently in CWU, but I can imagine that things had calmed down a good bit by now.

So instead of trying to push this "We must do oppression beacuse it is half life 2" playstyle, how about we decide not to do that, and only punish when somebody fucks up or does something that is worth the punishment?

Let the faction take this nice breather and enjoyment of not having to take LOAs every two or three weeks.

Yeah, I kinda despise how the Civil Workers exist as just a universal handiman faction for everything in the city, its totally not fair for y'all. There should really be some sort of alternative solution for Civil Workers being made to just go do everything, because the technical survival of the City should not really rest on the Atlas-like shoulders of one group of citizens. They're like the cool overworked firefighters who everyone is afraid to mess with because they do a lot OOCly and I think that's cool asf, honestly if people don't want to even deal with the possibility of a Combine-organized crackdown (not even corruption-based or anything, just interrogations, beatings, etc.) because of how stressful the faction is already, maybe something should be done for the current CWU to help take the load off so players still find the idea of dealing with a real dystopia fun? Why can't we have a proper, full-fledged engineering division for the Civil Protection that takes a huge load off of their shoulders? Where's my GRID boys at?

I wonder if the whole idea of the CWU is that there's no real reason to try and save a sinking ship, maybe its' supposed to make you want to resist? I dunno, since that's not happening, I think a cool solution would totally involve making a proper, full-fledged engineering and maintenance division for the CPs that isn't just a few dudes with APC certifications sitting around a vehicle bay.

I hope I don't sound like some KILL ALL CWU CHARACTERS I HATE THE PLAYERS OOCLY guy (even though my post was TOTALLY branded as something similar in order to fuel discussion and get people to talk and read) but I just hope to see if there's any viable improvements to making the gameplay loop more fun for everyone.

 

[Marshall]

I'll give what I get.

FUCKING BRING IT!

 

[boots]

Before making these types of demands, we urge you to play as CWU/CMRU.

Also I know it's been mentioned prior but these two rarely do interact and are their own separate entities.

 

[Risvolto]

Kill all workers

kill all CWU.

 

[ford-michigan]

I would like to add that for a certain arc it seems like the surveillance of the cwu is lacking for the magnitude of it. Like someone messing with the clc depot would have more investigation than one simple interrogation. I feel like there is a ooc protection of either the arc or the fl. Also I was told there was a roll but I don't remember seeing the purple text for a roll.

 

[RedHotGinger]

Oh yeah totally, I'm more just dissatisfied about the lack of the Civil Protection factions' response to everything. Everyone deserves a chance, but I feel like at the end of the day, a lot of cops are simply playing too nice out of OOC fear that the players will quit. IC oppression should inspire your OC to rebel and kick-ass, not get mad that you did everything that the combine said and they're still treating you like garbage and quit the server.

CP' are in a decent spot right now as far as I can tell. You can do certain things, rock the boat a little bit, without being assured you are getting a bullet drilled through your head. After all, if the first response you have to any developing situation is to just PK the person on the other end, nothing will ever develop.

People do go silent when CP's are around. People already get beaten. Some CP's steal shit from people. But its no fun for civs when they can be put on death row for some of the smallest things, as then CP's aren't an opportunity for RP - they're an obstacle for it. I have intentionally screwed around with CP's a little bit lately, just to allow a provoked reaction to occur. If CP's always jumped to the most extreme response, killing or crippling anyone who steps on a toe, I'd never do this because its not worth the trouble. Sometimes they will go to the extreme, but thats typically in circumstances that allow. In the rare ones its not, you can typically forgive it because its just happenstance development.

For the CMRU in particular, I don't mind the CMRU falling under the axe, though frankly we already are beneath it. I'm also not going to say that the CP faction hasn't' so far handled the Consul stuff fairly well. Sure, they didn't walk in and start beating us to death - or execute us all...but what would that have actually achieved? Even assuming we couldn't appeal that sort of thing, what are you left with? An empty clinic? People already play fast and loose with MedRP and there is a slum clinic the operates just as well already setup.

Oppression is all and well and good, but ultimately the server is made up of what you could consider to be secondary characters. None of us our the grand protagonist, but we do have our own place in the background of the collective story. Secondary characters can die randomly, but such deaths are best when provided with dramatic flair and follow-up consequences.

There's more to oppression than a pistol or even a stun-baton. Frankly, such options can sometimes be even better than the former. Personally, I don't think CP's are too nice. I think they generally handled this whole CMRU thing well.

 

[HOKI]

So true brother

 

[TheGamingPlumber]

Now that I'm home, I suppose that I will give my response as the CWU FL from my perspective..

RADX and Bi-em pretty much explained most of what I was going to say pretty well, barring some things I didn't agree with Bi-Em's post.

Ever since we were on Terminal 6 (that is, when I first joined CWU under Coronel's leadership), there have been constant issues plaguing:

Orders that had a deadline of one or two days to get it done or face some sort of obscure consequence

Civil Protection barging into the warehouse and essentially forcing us to do a task that required immediate attention or face obscure consequences, raging on from being beaten, charged or even killed (my character was on the receiving end of multiple threats)

Essentially, it was a revolving door of issues that moved on from each map, where we were required to immediately do something or face the consequences rather than allowing the faction to naturally deal with things which caused a lot of grievances from various faction members and even the FL.


I have had the chance to progress from being a worker at the bottom of the barrel to now running the faction, and I have seen almost every issue that's propped up regarding faction-to-faction interactions.

Moving on to workers being punished. There has been times, as the maps have been rotated, that Workers have received punishment for valid and legitimate reasons for the actions that were conducted by players on the faction. However, there have been times that players were punished for absolutely no reason aside from the cops wanting to exert their power.

As an example, last month Residential Block One was bombed and CWU was called in to put out the fire and contain the preliminary mess. There was a point where Civil Protection was ordering them to go on the catwalks in front of the residential block to "fix something" when the foreman brought up that the catwalk is unstable enough to even walk on due to the sabotage (even the GM who was presiding over that situation was telling both sides to not rush things). Instead of listening to reason, the cops decided to charge the majority of the workers with reckless operation since they wanted them to rush the situation instead of looking at it from a realistic standpoint.

After I heard the fallout ICLY and OOCLY,. I attempted to speak with the MCP regarding this matter and posed them the question realistically, but it went nowhere. The workers got charged for simply telling the cops that something realistic would happen to infrastructure that is basically been crumbling for the last 20 or so odd years.

This post feels rather inflammatory because you say, "I want to beat up more CWU/CMRU" all that is going to accomplish more players becoming agitated. Yes I agree that there should be collective punishment in some manner if IT IS WARRANTED. CWU Players shouldn't be harassed for just connecting onto the server and then loading in their respective character. As someone once said "All things must be done in moderation". When it comes to Civil Protection interacting with the citizens in the HL2 Universe, they are the main oppressors. Given by that, if we told everyone in Civil Protection to be Grimdark and Evil 24/7, it would end up with people quitting the server since it leads to no fun from both sides.

Repeating what SWOOTS said on the above. I urge you to play either faction so you understand how things are from our standpoint before you make a post like this. Majority of the complaints that I have witnessed currently are coming from players who've not played the faction in its current state and just choose to complain for the sake of it. If you are going to complain, you should try it out first and then bring in legitimate complaints


Civil Workers Union has a rather large role to play in the server, ever so more now then before. The "Surface" economy starts from CWU producing goods, which in turn stores sell and vice versa. Work shifts are an integral part of how people get paid and gather their points. I remember when I took over the reigns of this faction, and in my opinion, it was improperly managed by my two predecessors before me. I was told by Bassilik (Paraphrasing here since I cant exactly remember what he said) that "The Civil Workers Union to a degree is the lifeblood of Citizen Roleplay."

It has happened before and it still happens, many of the members get burnt out due to various reasons since the faction itself has turned into a 9-5 job. There are multiple issues daily arising from Orders, Stock replenishment, infrastructure repairs and more.

I am going to quote a few things that you have posted.

I want the lack of committed Civil Workers to cause machines to break and citizens to lose their hands in workshift machines.

This leads to more punishment to the faction members, as they are already being harassed. Which then would just leave to more issues and burnout, then killing the faction.

shoulders in the form of a GRID-style Engineering Division being filled with metrocops who help with city-projects and allow them to focus more on workshifts than anything.

The whole point of Civil Protection is to enforce the demands and will of the regime. If you added in a GRID styled division it would detract from CWU.

As far as I know, the CMRU and CWU are still in much of the same spot as it is today after a member of it committed such a grievous affair

This just feels like a generalization, both factions are separate in their interactions with the server.


All in all, I understand where this post is coming on, though you didn't choose the best wording to accompany it. You mention that the gameplay-loop should be made better for all parties for their enjoyment, which I do agree with. Though I am sure there are better ways of doing it than wanting to beat up more people to accomplish it,.

Every day is a new battle as there are many problems that pop up, and myself and the faction management are looking for better ways to help out the loop so our faction members have enjoyment when playing on the server. I have been on the receiving end of the beatings and threats that came from overzealous CivPro officers that just wanted to make the gameplay feel rushed and unenjoyable to the remainder of the people attending who aren't them.

Though just saying verbatim, "I want to beat more CWU/CMRU," will just cause more problems than solve them in the long run perhaps there are better alternatives that will benefit both factions in the long run. I want to leave you with this as a final thought, the issue between CivPro and CWU got so bad to the point that proper rules had to be put in place to prevent further issues. I will leave you with an excerpt from our Factions Guide.

​

A-2.1 | Civil Protection & You

When it comes to dealing with Civil Protection and interactions with the Civil Workers Union (Aka, you) you need to keep in mind that Civil Protection are upholders of the Combine’s grip on humanity.

You are able to keep them in cordial relations by:

• - Not keeping Tools that may be considered as Weapons on your person unless doing a job.
• - Not keeping materials on your person that exceeds the Civil Protection’s anti-scavenging decree, describing eight materials at a time unless heading to a Job.
• - Respect Civil Protection and their presence and they will equally respect you.
• - Following the standard rules all Citizens are expected to follow.
  
  
  So what about in the event that a Civil Protection officer decides to push you around with a workload that you have considered “Unimportant” at the present time? There are a few methods of dealing with this professionally:

1. Are you currently occupied or completing a task?
   If not, make some time to complete the task provided.
   
   
2. Is said task more important than that which the Officer is requesting you do?
   If not, pause the current task and help the Officer out with their requested task.
   
   
3. In the event that your task is more important, do the following:
   • 1. Tell the officer it will be done soon.
   • 2. Place the task onto the Work Board when possible and mark it with the Level of Importance you believe it is.
   • ----To avoid wasting time. You can also just use the relay to make a quick note of the task.
     3. Radio in to other workers that a new task is placed onto the Workboard and drop a message to a Senior Worker or Above that Civil Protection has requested it.
4. If the Civil Protection threatens you, immediately radio a Senior Member to assist you. Civil Protection below the rank of i3 cannot directly order you as a Worker to forcefully complete a task, outside of their jurisdiction.
   • 1. Senior Workers and above are also protected from those below the rank of i2 and vice versa. The higher the rank, the higher the CP needs to be (Until the rank of Director which maxes out to RL level authority, Captain however supersedes all CWU positions).
   • 2. If possible, you can also find an Unit ranking of i1 or an RL who would be more than happy to solve the dispute and punish disrupting units. You can even utilise Scanners for relaying messages.

Note: If a CP does indeed still beat you regardless, then you can get this handled via ICly contacting a higher ranked Unit to deal with the issue and solve it via IC Camera and Tracking evidence which GMs/Staff can provide via Logs. Also, Apprentices should not feel the need to do forced CP tasks.

 

[Botulism]

Now that I'm home, I suppose that I will give my response as the CWU FL from my perspective..

RADX and Bi-em pretty much explained most of what I was going to say pretty well, barring some things I didn't agree with Bi-Em's post.

Ever since we were on Terminal 6 (that is, when I first joined CWU under Coronel's leadership), there have been constant issues plaguing:

Orders that had a deadline of one or two days to get it done or face some sort of obscure consequence

Civil Protection barging into the warehouse and essentially forcing us to do a task that required immediate attention or face obscure consequences, raging on from being beaten, charged or even killed (my character was on the receiving end of multiple threats)

Essentially, it was a revolving door of issues that moved on from each map, where we were required to immediately do something or face the consequences rather than allowing the faction to naturally deal with things which caused a lot of grievances from various faction members and even the FL.


I have had the chance to progress from being a worker at the bottom of the barrel to now running the faction, and I have seen almost every issue that's propped up regarding faction-to-faction interactions.

Moving on to workers being punished. There has been times, as the maps have been rotated, that Workers have received punishment for valid and legitimate reasons for the actions that were conducted by players on the faction. However, there have been times that players were punished for absolutely no reason aside from the cops wanting to exert their power.

As an example, last month Residential Block One was bombed and CWU was called in to put out the fire and contain the preliminary mess. There was a point where Civil Protection was ordering them to go on the catwalks in front of the residential block to "fix something" when the foreman brought up that the catwalk is unstable enough to even walk on due to the sabotage (even the GM who was presiding over that situation was telling both sides to not rush things). Instead of listening to reason, the cops decided to charge the majority of the workers with reckless operation since they wanted them to rush the situation instead of looking at it from a realistic standpoint.

After I heard the fallout ICLY and OOCLY,. I attempted to speak with the MCP regarding this matter and posed them the question realistically, but it went nowhere. The workers got charged for simply telling the cops that something realistic would happen to infrastructure that is basically been crumbling for the last 20 or so odd years.

This post feels rather inflammatory because you say, "I want to beat up more CWU/CMRU" all that is going to accomplish more players becoming agitated. Yes I agree that there should be collective punishment in some manner if IT IS WARRANTED. CWU Players shouldn't be harassed for just connecting onto the server and then loading in their respective character. As someone once said "All things must be done in moderation". When it comes to Civil Protection interacting with the citizens in the HL2 Universe, they are the main oppressors. Given by that, if we told everyone in Civil Protection to be Grimdark and Evil 24/7, it would end up with people quitting the server since it leads to no fun from both sides.

Repeating what SWOOTS said on the above. I urge you to play either faction so you understand how things are from our standpoint before you make a post like this. Majority of the complaints that I have witnessed currently are coming from players who've not played the faction in its current state and just choose to complain for the sake of it. If you are going to complain, you should try it out first and then bring in legitimate complaints


Civil Workers Union has a rather large role to play in the server, ever so more now then before. The "Surface" economy starts from CWU producing goods, which in turn stores sell and vice versa. Work shifts are an integral part of how people get paid and gather their points. I remember when I took over the reigns of this faction, and in my opinion, it was improperly managed by my two predecessors before me. I was told by Bassilik (Paraphrasing here since I cant exactly remember what he said) that "The Civil Workers Union to a degree is the lifeblood of Citizen Roleplay."

It has happened before and it still happens, many of the members get burnt out due to various reasons since the faction itself has turned into a 9-5 job. There are multiple issues daily arising from Orders, Stock replenishment, infrastructure repairs and more.

I am going to quote a few things that you have posted.


This leads to more punishment to the faction members, as they are already being harassed. Which then would just leave to more issues and burnout, then killing the faction.


The whole point of Civil Protection is to enforce the demands and will of the regime. If you added in a GRID styled division it would detract from CWU.


This just feels like a generalization, both factions are separate in their interactions with the server.


All in all, I understand where this post is coming on, though you didn't choose the best wording to accompany it. You mention that the gameplay-loop should be made better for all parties for their enjoyment, which I do agree with. Though I am sure there are better ways of doing it than wanting to beat up more people to accomplish it,.

Every day is a new battle as there are many problems that pop up, and myself and the faction management are looking for better ways to help out the loop so our faction members have enjoyment when playing on the server. I have been on the receiving end of the beatings and threats that came from overzealous CivPro officers that just wanted to make the gameplay feel rushed and unenjoyable to the remainder of the people attending who aren't them.

Though just saying verbatim, "I want to beat more CWU/CMRU," will just cause more problems than solve them in the long run perhaps there are better alternatives that will benefit both factions in the long run. I want to leave you with this as a final thought, the issue between CivPro and CWU got so bad to the point that proper rules had to be put in place to prevent further issues. I will leave you with an excerpt from our Factions Guide.

​

Just reading this now, thanks for replying! I never seriously considered that there would actually be player agitation OOCly coming from anything like actually implementing or suggesting this. It's hard for me to understand how sectarian (if that's the word to put it) Willard's playerbase can be, I've seen genuine threads like "how not to hate rebels as a combine player" as if a game could make someone actually dislike the other OOCly for their roleplay. That's totally not me! I really enjoy RPing with every faction and player that HL2RP has to offer, I'm just of the belief that consequences, including death, are a necessity for most quality characters in this gamemode, as my best characters have always ended up dying, either they be in the most bombastic or even the worst and quietest of ways, and it helped me improve greatly because I got to remember them much better down the road.

I never had any fun in keeping a character around for months on end, because their story got too stale and at the end of the day it's just doing more of the same-old same-old as that same boring guy. I wanna experience the same loop with someone new, fresh and interesting, yknow? So I rebel, fight the Combine, and eventually get that guy killed in a refreshing way or do what have you and try it all over again, that's my idea of a HL2RP gameplay loop. I can fully empathize with people who've had characters around for years and don't wanna see Civil Protection suddenly go hyper-oppressive just because some dude on the forums complained about it, but I will never understand the OOC frustration of ICly trying to please an alien-dictatorship and no matter WHAT you do, always being thought of as permanently expendable and easy to throw-away at a moments' notice. That shouldn't even be an IC or OOC goal you should HAVE, to permanently please the Combine, because at the end of the day, the Combine want you dead and gone. I get OOCly frustrated sometimes at how my OCs go, but I never have the urge to complain because to me, that's just how HL2RP works. You aren't supposed to win. It's not always fun in the conventional way, the fun to me is having my character live a relatively good life and discover some innate beautiful thing within themselves or the world before dying brutally. It kindof goes with my 'God is in everything' nutjob philosophy.

What if the i5's of Civil Protection complained and left everytime an RL was a dick to them on the radio? My cop heard of a unit that get his sterilized credits docked and got disciplined over telling an i2 who was great at cooking over the radio to 'make sure to wash his dishes' (could be apocryphal because its' hearsay, but I've seen just as bad things happen toward CPs for minor situations). And it makes perfect sense since its' a dystopia, yknow? The only thing keeping our players in the faction is probably the scripts and the entertainment value. If Citizens and Civil Protection have to deal with the dystopia, why can the CWU use both in-character and out-of-character leverage to keep what should be an unstoppable force off of their characters' backs? It just doesn't make a whole lot of IC sense to my character because we should be going after them.

Let it just be said that I have nothing against the CWU Faction and its' players as a player myself, when I say in the top of my thread that I wanna beat up Civil Workers, I don't envision myself donning a cop-suit and going down there to enact sadistic things at random...I just want my Cop character to be the ground-unit in a multi-faceted purge, making arrests, watching show-trials, rounding up citizens to go to forced denunciation rally's...Though my original post was definitely using a lot of pathos and emotion for dramatic effect, I don't personally care what happens, though my OCs are definitely invested. I just believe that out-of-character fears are getting in the way of doing what our characters would realistically do. Thanks for keeping the discourse up, I really enjoy that tons of CWU players have given their input upon this, and I actually would love to try a CWU/CMRU character out, I'm working on getting one to apply right now, actually! I hope this is a good response and add-on to your thoughts, as I hope it helped expand on the whole thread.

 

[Divine]

I give people drugs when I get bored to get them addicted and start a drug epidemic

 

[Khrushchev]

Yeah, I kinda despise how the Civil Workers exist as just a universal handiman faction for everything in the city, its totally not fair for y'all. There should really be some sort of alternative solution for Civil Workers being made to just go do everything, because the technical survival of the City should not really rest on the Atlas-like shoulders of one group of citizens. They're like the cool overworked firefighters who everyone is afraid to mess with because they do a lot OOCly and I think that's cool asf, honestly if people don't want to even deal with the possibility of a Combine-organized crackdown (not even corruption-based or anything, just interrogations, beatings, etc.) because of how stressful the faction is already, maybe something should be done for the current CWU to help take the load off so players still find the idea of dealing with a real dystopia fun? Why can't we have a proper, full-fledged engineering division for the Civil Protection that takes a huge load off of their shoulders? Where's my GRID boys at?

I wonder if the whole idea of the CWU is that there's no real reason to try and save a sinking ship, maybe its' supposed to make you want to resist? I dunno, since that's not happening, I think a cool solution would totally involve making a proper, full-fledged engineering and maintenance division for the CPs that isn't just a few dudes with APC certifications sitting around a vehicle bay.

I hope I don't sound like some KILL ALL CWU CHARACTERS I HATE THE PLAYERS OOCLY guy (even though my post was TOTALLY branded as something similar in order to fuel discussion and get people to talk and read) but I just hope to see if there's any viable improvements to making the gameplay loop more fun for everyone.

yeah valid points here. alot of people OOCly refuse to end their characters / let them die. alot of people play in bad faith, seeing rp as a "competition" that must be won against opposing factions or w/e. it's why i think just saying "more dystopia and consequences!" would just lead to a cluster fuck.

i wrote a thread some years ago about a vision for cps and oppression and w/e that I thought would be fun

https://willard.network/forums/threads/oppression-city-side-responses-cops-dispatch.7239/

as for the cwu, i don't play anymore but i always thought the cwu as a concept was boring (speaking generally for hl2rp.) workshifts were always "/me crafts a backpack" but like 5 paragraphs long and done 4 times over. with GOI or w/e (still haven't played), i've heard that it's only gotten worse because workshifts are 100% game-ifed and there's not much room for custom rp shifts anymore (that may be untrue though). dev features should always enhance rp, not replace it, and i think GOI may have replaced that rp. however, don't take my word as law and also remember that i hate the cwu lol

 

[utterly faustian spirit]

i think we should blast cmru out cannons

 

[Rebel RP Philosopher]

The title made me laugh, yes there is truth to this

 

[boots]

Yeah, I kinda despise how the Civil Workers exist as just a universal handiman faction for everything in the city, its totally not fair for y'all. There should really be some sort of alternative solution for Civil Workers being made to just go do everything, because the technical survival of the City should not really rest on the Atlas-like shoulders of one group of citizens.

There are a ton of certifications for CWU which dictate what you can and cannot do, all of which requires training and specializations.

 

[Rebel RP Philosopher]

They're like the cool overworked firefighters who everyone is afraid to mess with because they do a lot OOCly and I think that's cool asf, honestly if people don't want to even deal with the possibility of a Combine-organized crackdown (not even corruption-based or anything, just interrogations, beatings, etc.) because of how stressful the faction is already, maybe something should be done for the current CWU to help take the load off so players still find the idea of dealing with a real dystopia fun?

There's no need to diversify the production / engineering / maintenance roleplay over to Civil Protection, Civil Workers' Union is just a glorified simon says faction which tells citizens how to roleplay picking up rubble. A tutorial faction, if i may.

The way how things have been made highly bureaucratic which cause stress, I would say has less to do with the theme of hl2 rp, rather control of roleplay quality and defined lines for transgressions, which cook self checking conflict. It also may make the experience in the group feel like being part of something real, but the more you weigh roleplay on realism, will this gatekeep more roleplay behind these players - turning the roleplay to actual work.

For instance, having a workshift for the production of items is one way to make items happen. But at the same time, you can just cook a narrative that goods have been shipped in to the city - skipping the stress of having to roleplay for the same scripts.

On another thread, Willard has been compared to being a drug ironically, however, for CWU i could consider the root of the faction's fun deriving from being a workaholic within a video game. It's easy to see one's achievements manifest through the group and it is evident that you have a role with meaning to the community, yet it is time consuming and can become exhausting because the gamemode relies a lot on you, which may lead to burnouts from this stress and hence inactivity.

 

[Botulism]

There are a ton of certifications for CWU which dictate what you can and cannot do, all of which requires training and specializations.

Oh nono, I meant more for the faction as a whole. Sure there are some workers who can't do this or that, but regardless of whenever something goes wrong in the city that can't be solved with a gun, it's 99% of the time going to be fixed by solely the CWU and no other citizens are involved.

 

[Rebel RP Philosopher]

it's 99% of the time going to be fixed by solely the CWU and no other citizens are involved.

CWU is supposed to be a simon who integrates citizens to do roleplay by guiding them on what to do, if CWU is a closed faction when doing these mini-events, they are but an ambient character which mainly serves roleplay within the faction itself.