community feedback thread for TBC vs S2K

[captain hoovie]

Let's not forget the difficulty in fighting NPCs. S2K enables the time, freedom and capacity to solo them properly if required. TBC is more than usually a death sentence.

i mean they're supposed to be a danger IC, aren't they? it's fucking bizarre how all HL2RP servers ignore the very intentional DANGER of having to face xenian infestation. not like people stick to the cities just cus

EDIT: LINK TO NEW THREAD FOR FURTHER DEV PLANS: https://willard.network/forums/threads/tbc-changes-development-updates-and-suggestions.4890/

 

[Asimo1234]

consider decreasing damage done to players who are crouched (?) (speculative suggestion tbh), currently you can still freely crouch or duck in TBC. this was actually exploited by an OTA player earlier

Gotta reference that not only OTA were doing this, seen plenty of rebs do it as well. Survival instinct. Regardless, I don't think this is intended since I am unable to crouch when it is not my turn, while other can. Must be a bug.

players who crouch, use cover and realistic tactics to avoid being shot should be rewarded.

Using cover in TBC is already hugely rewarded by the way TBC works.
> Start your turn, move out of cover
> Shoot
> Move back behind the wall
The complete lack of a counter to this (No suppression mechanic) means that I feel cover is already strong enough. If anyone can hits you, then you're just being flanked I guess.

introduce a sprinting mechanic. this might already technically be in, but like in XCOM, you should be able to move significant distances if you opt to not aim and shoot. this makes flanking more viable like it is in S2K.

Every turn you get 2 AP points. You can see your movement on the floor. The first blue ring is where you can currently move without losing an AP. The first yellow line is where you can move expending 1 AP. The second yellow line is where you can move expending 2 AP.
Shooting a gun x amount of times (Depends on the weapon) costs an AP.
Moving further decreases the amount of times you can shoot your weapon.

whenever players died they actually respawned immediately on their corpses, but were ragdolled and told to wait for the fight to end

This is neat, We kinda have it in the bleedout mechanic, but I always felt that system encouraged people to "Double-tap" in TBC to "Secure a kill".
Forcing deaths to wait till combat is over allows for RP to happen. People to perhaps beg for their life, or give people a way to end it themselves by grabbing a pistol from their belt and blowing their brains out.
It's a roleplay server after all, so I think being able to roleplay your death would be a positive change rather than the black "lmao ur dead clicc ok" screen.

 

[jhenderson]

This is neat, We kinda have it in the bleedout mechanic, but I always felt that system encouraged people to "Double-tap" in TBC to "Secure a kill".
Forcing deaths to wait till combat is over allows for RP to happen. People to perhaps beg for their life, or give people a way to end it themselves by grabbing a pistol from their belt and blowing their brains out.
It's a roleplay server after all, so I think being able to roleplay your death would be a positive change rather than the black "lmao ur dead clicc ok" screen.

for me, simply roleplaying bleeding to death is reasonable enough. regardless, it gave the medical department on S86 an actual purpose, on WN it gives CMU an added purpose, plus medical staff on either combine or resistance sides respectively.

while i agree that the test has shown how TBC can easily turn into a disaster, i'd like to give my 5 cents on the situation.
i believe this is an extremely important crossroards for Willard, as it is genuinely a one-of-a-kind experience and a change like this could seriously disrupt it and potentially kill it in the long run. i'll try and do my best at summing it up, and i encourage people viewing the thread to read thru my post.

let me get it out of the way and say that s2k is THE optimal way for large-scale (10+ people involved) encounters, i think making it the server-wide default is going to flat-out kill the server.

- let me speak from experience. i've been involved with lemonpunch, and later nebulous.cloud, since 2014, being involved in staff affairs pretty much non stop up until 2020-ish. the reason nebulous, despite its robust playerbase, shriveled up and died the way it did is quite simple - the community, over a long period of time, turned away from prioritizing roleplay and towards more concrete OOC gains and action. the was due to the server relying heavily on S2K, which, over time, created an OOC hierarchy among players. players were forced to rely on their OOC fps skills to determine their characters' abilities and fate at large, which bled into greater IC happenings on the server. eventually this drove away people that were better / more interested in RP due to their inability to compete with the S2Kers, and created a calcified, unhealthy environment on the server. roleplay was largely considered a side-thing for most 'power players', just something to wait through on your way until the next big rush where you curbstomp the enemy and get the cool stuff. really, it quickly turned the server into a series of circlejerk, where you couldn't step out of line because otherwise mr. epic pro gamer would find an excuse to get kill auths on your character and blam you with no hesitation. this is also what's responsible for the infamous nebulous OTA circlejerk. it was a faction comprised llargely of 'counter strike buds'

• - an argument ive heard in my conversations with OTA leads was the following: "Well Willard has a much less toxic mindset and people are more interested in RP, so it won't happen the same way". and while that may be the case now, it also used to be the case on older lemonpunch, and that didnt stop it from getting worse. bad actors can rear their heads at any moment. Willard owes its amazing community mentality largely to the fact that it is a completely immersive experience completely independent of OOC technicalities like staff politicking or, again, individual players' non-rp-related FPS skills. if we leave player's characters at the mercy of their or someone else's OOC circumstances, this is quickly going to destroy this existing good will, and will erode the server's rp potential down to nothing.

so while i've experienced first hand the issues tbc can bring, i think all of these issues could be potentially addressed from the development side (i know @Gr4Ss is busy, but i am willing to cash out some money to see them fixed) and ultimately resolved with a balance between it and s2k, but making the latter the default system will spell doom for Willard in the long run. the server stands out precisely because of its unique balance of roleplay and gameplay elements, and stripping it will ruin the magic of it all

i really dont want to get into 2015 server lore. i played lemonpunch once. i walked into the slums on industrial17 and observed people roleplaying filming interracial pornography in the slum apartments thru /mes (yes this actually occurred). disconnected in disgust. never reconnected. i think maybe lemonpunch's problems were far deeper than the issue of S2K ruining roleplay quality but im not really sure because that is my sole impression of LP.

to be quite frank with you, the overemphasis on combat handling seems to be missing the point entirely. after years of playing Half Life 2 roleplay, seeing it go through Nexus, OpenAura, Clockwork, Nutscript and now Helix and its various modifications.. I was already cynical and tired of the concept by the time I first heard Lemonpunch. Williard Networks impresses me in a few ways though. What most of the commenters here are failing to mention is the fact that S2K ends up favoring the <10% of players who actually figure out how to use C++ software that the anti-cheat has not detected who aren't spinbotting. Especially since the current map has multiple chokepoints, and the SWEPs heavily emphasize wall-banging. Out of the hundred people who play, give or take, and the dozens who might join, statistically speaking a few dozen are probably cheating in some way and that's just how it is.

The current issues regarding Williard Networks playability has to do with everything aside from combat and scripts. A lot of people are leaving it simple as "TBC for small parties, S2K for large" and that's easy enough for everyone. Don't worry so much about combat, worry about everything else. Honestly I don't care too much about combat, I've never connected to a Half-Life 2 Roleplaying server to just experience some sort of combat-to-RPG-grind system. On gmod hl2rp since forever, players who were maining citizen chars were excessively told to "Passive Roleplay" whenever they complained or even hinted at how fucking boring roleplaying a citizen on HL2RP often is. Williard seems to be interested in breaking the norm in this regard, and if that's really the case the server should attempt to make itself as approachable as reasonably possible

Short Stories/Incursions are a massively enjoyable so far. They have some caveats tho

EDIT: void me ranting about my gf. that was ooc.

 

[captain hoovie]

for me, simply roleplaying bleeding to death is reasonable enough. regardless, it gave the medical department on S86 an actual purpose, on WN it gives CMU an added purpose, plus medical staff on either combine or resistance sides respectively.


i really dont want to get into 2015 server lore. i played lemonpunch once. i walked into the slums on industrial17 and observed people roleplaying filming interracial pornography in the slum apartments thru /mes (yes this actually occurred). disconnected in disgust. never reconnected. i think maybe lemonpunch's problems were far deeper than the issue of S2K ruining roleplay quality but im not really sure because that is my sole impression of LP.

to be quite frank with you, the overemphasis on combat handling seems to be missing the point entirely. after years of playing Half Life 2 roleplay, seeing it go through Nexus, OpenAura, Clockwork, Nutscript and now Helix and its various modifications.. I was already cynical and tired of the concept by the time I first heard Lemonpunch. Williard Networks impresses me in a few ways though. What most of the commenters here are failing to mention is the fact that S2K ends up favoring the <10% of players who actually figure out how to use C++ software that the anti-cheat has not detected who aren't spinbotting. Especially since the current map has multiple chokepoints, and the SWEPs heavily emphasize wall-banging. Out of the hundred people who play, give or take, and the dozens who might join, statistically speaking a few dozen are probably cheating in some way and that's just how it is.

The current issues regarding Williard Networks playability has to do with everything aside from combat and scripts. A lot of people are leaving it simple as "TBC for small parties, S2K for large" and that's easy enough for everyone. Don't worry so much about combat, worry about everything else. Honestly I don't care too much about combat, I've never connected to a Half-Life 2 Roleplaying server to just experience some sort of combat-to-RPG-grind system. On gmod hl2rp since forever, players who were maining citizen chars were excessively told to "Passive Roleplay" whenever they complained or even hinted at how fucking boring roleplaying a citizen on HL2RP often is. Williard seems to be interested in breaking the norm in this regard, and if that's really the case the server should attempt to make itself as approachable as reasonably possible

Short Stories/Incursions are a massively enjoyable so far. They have some caveats tho



anyway in the middle of writing this essay schizo nonsensical shit-post about how to make HL2RP not gay as fuck, i finished drinking my monster energy, im sleepy and my girlfriend keeps asking me to pay attention to her. i fucking hate women but she lets me bareback her and i love her to bits. just like uh, think about a normal, random person whos played HL2RP before joining the server completely fresh and how they would perceive the current state of the server. the maps also really well done. anyway this has been a jack noble rant, signing off, ill edit this later or something, cya roleplayers.

View attachment 8509

"baby talk to me im horny"
'no hang on babe i gotta write finish this rant to these guys on williard forums about how to not make HL2RP fucking gay and dumb'

i appreciate hearing about your sex life but i only really brought up combat's relation to server dynamics because.... this is a thread about the importance of a combat system. and i still stand by what i said, combat is still important to the server because that's where critical situations for many characters and factions are resolved. you cannot pretend it has nothing to do with the server at large

 

[HOKI]

Let's not forget the difficulty in fighting NPCs. S2K enables the time, freedom and capacity to solo them properly if required. TBC is more than usually a death sentence.

This is good because it makes NPCs actually dangerous than just annoying (disregarding the broken ones that are bugged and attack you out of TBC when ur in tbc)

 

[HOKI]

The biggest issues with TBC are that it takes only one shot to force you to fight an enemy or die trying to escape and unintuitive or illogical 'things' like debuffs, initiative loss and being able to look around.

The first is a major issue; imagine you're a rebel/refugee/whatever armed with a melee. An unexpected CP sweep comes along and you get shot instantly and lasered in 2 turns by 3 units high on adrenaline. They obviously steal your initiative and decimate you. boom, dead.

Why speed determines when you'll play your turn is beyond me. Personally I think it should just increase your movement points and obviously speed.

Lastly, being able to look around in TBC is non-sensical in my opinion. It also lets people abuse it. For example, if you're in a fight, behind some cover where your arm/shoulder is poking out, you can just turn around and make it completely impossible to hit you (this happened to me once when I was going to kill a rebel with an m249)
You can also move your mouse around really fast to cause your model to spaz around and your enemy to hit you in the arms which I think deals half damage even on critical hits. I suggested to remove this ability ages ago but it was denied on the basis of it 'feeling restrictive' and that it would seem as if the game crashed.

To touch upon another issue, radioing/talking when it's not your turn. This is a pretty big issue as it completely removes the applicability of ambushes and allows people to freely exchange vital info while they are waiting for their turn.
You can't ambush a cop without him radio'ing in for backup while it's still warm-up, causing a dozen other cops to roll up to your location before the first turn even ended, where they block your exit routes and shoot you as soon as you're done shooting the cop you ambushed.

I do have another suggestion that ties in with my second point; the first turn in TBC should have action points halved and the attacker should be able to act first.
My reasoning for this is if you engage someone who has their gun up - you, as the attacker, will undoubtedly get shot despite having the advantage of shooting your enemy first.
It makes no sense in my mind that the person you shot gets to shoot you first when the warm-up ends. But in order for it to be balanced, action points would be halved so you can't dish out a large amount of damage and your enemy can't run a significant distance away.
On the second turn the action points would be back to normal.

 

[John Rico]

Didn't get to really experience the TBC since I started playing again, but I don't see the big deal in sidelining it and letting the devs work on it on their own time, the whole server went off for a few months back when there were some other dev issues piling up.

S2rp for smaller fights and S2K for larger engagements would work in the meantime, I'd think that adding all these RPG elements into s2k would actually work as a good complementary system to have alongside TBC, damage and accuracy based on stats or whatever works, and heavily limiting movement to make sure bhopping/run'n'gun is impossible and you're golden.

 

[Atle]

Questions:

1. Since larger issues pop up when TBC exceeds X amounts of players (gets too slow) would a solution be it'd warn everyone X amount of players have joined > commencing S2K in X amount of time/rounds?
   1. If we went with this option, given all weapons are balanced around TBC and not S2K would this not become an issue?

Trouble will stem from weapon balancing given you can't balance for both sides without it becoming a logistical nightmare, one is turn based and one is free flow.. So what's a good solution there? Interested to hear more on that

 

[Thood74]

TBC has its moments where it really sucks, but it’s still (unfortunately) better than S2K or S2RP. It just needs a polish and balance pass.

TBC completely cripples rebels and their style of hit and run combat. One entire half of the server can't accurately attack their enemy without TBC stalling them while others move to reinforce them. An upside I once heard about TBC is that it allows for roleplay during combat, and now I'm hearing that communicating during TB Combat is causing more problems than it fixes.

Swagile, you even describe such a curb stomp in the post I'm quoting.

While TBC is quite frankly great for NPC combat (when it works) it doesn't work for humans fighting other humans. Especially in large groups, it is so goddamn slow. I wish I could also say it's good for events, but that's not true.

1. Since larger issues pop up when TBC exceeds X amounts of players (gets too slow) would a solution be it'd warn everyone X amount of players have joined > commencing S2K in X amount of time/rounds?
   1. If we went with this option, given all weapons are balanced around TBC and not S2K would this not become an issue?

Trouble will stem from weapon balancing given you can't balance for both sides without it becoming a logistical nightmare, one is turn based and one is free flow.. So what's a good solution there? Interested to hear more on that

Rebalance your weapons base stats around S2K, rework skills that effect combat to effect weapon accuracy, recoil, weapon equip/raise/reload times, melee damage and swing speed (don't say you can't, we all know your devs are talented enough for it)...TBC can stay for NPCs, whose stats can be modified if necessary. Or get rid of it if that's simply not a possibility.

Also, sidenote, what the fuck is up with vortigaunts? Having to charge their beam for at most 55 damage? Have any of you seen vortigaunts in regular HL2 they fire massive fuckoff lighting bolts that leave craters in people make the max damage the default and then double it or smth that's all

 

[Atle]

I've got 2 note pages so far, let me know what you think although the weapon balance issue exiting TBC still remains a question above





These are just ideas / notes so please do not take them as de-facto decisions

 

[Rabid]

I would be very, very hesitant on doing this because it will make ambushes and assassinations in the city absolutely impossible for rebels to do and further compound how punishing it feels to do anything in the city due to TBC. As of right now you can at least double-tap someone to finish them off, but making this impossible would cause a lot of headaches.

Sweeps and fights in the sewers seem like they'll be fine though.

As for weapon balance, you cannot have S2K weapon balance in TBC at all I don't think. It would be hyper-lethal and break TBC in two. As much as the TTK sucks, its better than the alternative.

 

[Rebel RP Philosopher]

the best kill system is the one you win in

 

[Thood74]

Making people godded while unconscious during combat is going to pretty much ruin any chance of surface rebellion hit and run ambush stuff. Worsens the problem.

The other simplifications will undoubtedly help if not fix the core problem with TBC being sluggish. Even if the addition of turn numbers above heads feels a bit more gamey, it's clear TBC and it's UI aren't about immersion.

 

[jhenderson]

I've got 2 note pages so far, let me know what you think although the weapon balance issue exiting TBC still remains a question above

View attachment 8666
View attachment 8663


An additional note could be a "lockdown" period where nobody else can enter the combat due to timescale with a warning text displayed for other players expressing "This is a timescaled combat, you are unable to enter." Something something

i rarely say this because i hate dickriding, but you have an excellent mentality as a community director. you deserve praise for actually taking player feedback seriously and your ability to tangibly listen. i hope your playerbase quality improves significantly, please keep up the good work.

 

[jhenderson]

Making people godded while unconscious during combat is going to pretty much ruin any chance of surface rebellion hit and run ambush stuff. Worsens the problem.

The other simplifications will undoubtedly help if not fix the core problem with TBC being sluggish. Even if the addition of turn numbers above heads feels a bit more gamey, it's clear TBC and it's UI aren't about immersion.

View attachment 8662

I would be very, very hesitant on doing this because it will make ambushes and assassinations in the city absolutely impossible for rebels to do and further compound how punishing it feels to do anything in the city due to TBC. As of right now you can at least double-tap someone to finish them off, but making this impossible would cause a lot of headaches.

Sweeps and fights in the sewers seem like they'll be fine though.

As for weapon balance, you cannot have S2K weapon balance in TBC at all I don't think. It would be hyper-lethal and break TBC in two. As much as the TTK sucks, its better than the alternative.

i think the only thing i can decisively conclude is that the system needs rigorous battle-testing and extensively tweaking as a result.

please make some sort of tutorial guide for TBC newbies.



i think some other stuff that could make TBC more intense and high-stakes is adding a disarm mechanic. This might sound controversial or be a really hot take but quite a bit of training is extended in real life to avoid possible disarm situations. It's not exactly how you're thinking though, someone ripping a single-action pistol out of your hands and shooting you with it rarely actually works out (see the linked vide) -- it's more like because you made a bad entry on a doorway with a hostile lying in wait, he saw your gun poke through the door first and made the opportunity to grab and latch onto it. Now you're playing tug of rope with one or two people for a loaded rifle.

another thing: simply shooting someone in the arm, hand, or the actual gun itself could also be used to take them out of the fight (some calibers, they're basically permanently dis-ARMed but usually said injuries aren't particularly survivable). Maybe generally adding an injury system could help to fill in the gaps S2K simply doesn't. Shot in the legs? You're stuck with crouching and crawling around until you have the injury treated through medRP or scripts (depending on how you want to go about it). At the very least, it could be a toggleable, optional system for only certain fights.

edit:
a caveat i have about any amount of "realism" in roleplay and just video games as a whole, and im going to attach a screenshot where some funny sperg (me) left a negative review of a steam game. just remember to make sure its fun before realistic and that probably goes without saying

 

[Atle]

Alright since nobody likes the unconscious/death notes we could keep TTK. The main difficulty will definitely be the weapon balance leaving TBC > S2K, we could go for a sort of middle-ish ground where we overall reduce damage a little bit to make S2K a bit less kill kill kill to high ping users a chance

 

[Rabid]

We could go for a sort of middle-ish ground where we overall reduce damage a little bit to make S2K a bit less kill kill kill to high high ping users a chance

I think leaving TBC > S2K is the lesser of two evils honestly. I wouldn't adjust anything damage wise in this case.

Reducing the damage further is going to hurt TBC even more as damage is already low and there aren't any headshot multipliers for balance reasons. S2K would feel like genuine nerf darts; the lowest tier of pistol already takes 7 shots to kill someone without armour for example.

Increasing damage would help S2K immensely but break TBC because your opponents can't dynamically dodge or avoid you moment-to-moment, and people with automatic weapons would get an even bigger advantage. It'd become a massacre.

 

[jhenderson]

Alright since nobody likes the unconscious/death notes we could keep TTK. The main difficult will definitely be the weapon balance leaving TBC > S2K, we could go for a sort of middle-ish ground where we overall reduce damage a little bit to make S2K a bit less kill kill kill to high high ping users a chance

its just annoying or frustrating sitting around ragdolled unable to truly do anything. this suggestion might be controversially autistic, but you could disable ingame death entirely and in its place just have players taken out of turn order, receive randomly generated text notifying the defeated player what their injuries were (can be randomized or determined by GMs), and have them roleplay accordingly but unable to re-enter the fight.

on s86 they had a much more informal version of this system
after a long, serverwide shootout? /event "If you were killed in the recent shootout, notify staff so we can teleport you back to roleplay your injuries accordingly." There was a system with in-game medics who used a /examine chat command to look at a character's injuries, which were determined by staff intervention text, or by a randomly generated system. This was on a heavily modified Clockwork base.

 

[Atle]

its just annoying or frustrating sitting around ragdolled unable to truly do anything. this suggestion might be controversially autistic, but you could disable ingame death entirely and in its place just have players taken out of turn order, receive randomly generated text notifying the defeated player what their injuries were (can be randomized or determined by GMs), and have them roleplay accordingly but unable to re-enter the fight.

on s86 they had a much more informal version of this system
after a long, serverwide shootout? /event "If you were killed in the recent shootout, notify staff so we can teleport you back to roleplay your injuries accordingly." There was a system with in-game medics who used a /examine chat command to look at a character's injuries, which were determined by staff intervention text, or by a randomly generated system. This was on a heavily modified Clockwork base.

I'm not sure it'd be the right approach to have this be GM determined as that'd be very top heavy but we could have it so that unconscious players gets auto kicked out of the match? Added a point on that

 

[Rabid]

But we could have it so that unconscious players gets auto kicked out of the match?

The problem is would they still be able to be targeted for the sake of PK's and such?

Given you have to shoot an unconscious player again to properly kill them, how do you think that would work?