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Alright, so I said I'd get down to it and bring about as much information as possible about the Community Meeting - but, of course, one can and does get side-tracked. We'll be addressing the elephants in the room. But first we'll talk about the more simple elements:
The server is opening on the 21st January, that is on the Saturday.
Late afternoon or early evening around the GMT Timezone, yet to decide a dedicated time.
We also had a replacement system for Community Management being firmly embedded as the sole driving factor of Willard's HL2RP server. As many are aware, Community Managers themselves have a lot of responsibility and tasks at hand that don't just facilitate the vision of the ENGLISH HL2RP Server, but that of its other outlying platforms. Each CM was specialised in their own way, they have talents and skillsets that best suited for them to branch outward and focus on particular elements of Willard. But that came with its own problems - Community Management couldn't always be there for the server because of that. This system has been locally changed.
Community Management still exists, and will continue to work as its intended function - though the server will be handed down to a localised set of overseeing figures. This is known currently as the Server Council which is created to facilitate a very central managing of the Main Server, Short Stories & Expeditions servers. Development is also becoming more open and aware to suggestions and possible changes that can be made to our codebase and framework.
The current server council members appointed are:
TheDeNuke
TheDeNuke
M!NT
Rabithunter
A fourth slot that is yet to be filled. Currently undecided on the individual who should take that position.
They'll be working with me very closely as to make the decisions that nobody else has to bear the responsibility for.
NOW TO ADDRESS THE ELEPHANTS IN THE ROOM THAT WAS DISCUSSED...
We spoke about the various issues that currently inhibit the server from dysfunctional communication links. Between factions, players and staff alike and that was also a designative element within Community Management as well, said problems were present within. Understood there's been a lot of open dialogue on forums and discord, but the clear warning signs that were presented were sometimes dismissed over the period of time this was occurring.
I know most of you are aware of those situations beforehand. Changes to factions that weren't properly passed down the chain, maybe even forced changes without prior communication or discussion or methods behind closed doors that nobody knew about till last minute. I want to primarily focus on these issues, which since my trivial time in Server Directorship so far is at least providing a success ratio if it is seen that way.
I know most of you are aware of those situations beforehand. Changes to factions that weren't properly passed down the chain, maybe even forced changes without prior communication or discussion or methods behind closed doors that nobody knew about till last minute. I want to primarily focus on these issues, which since my trivial time in Server Directorship so far is at least providing a success ratio if it is seen that way.
Most forms of roles involving decision making were committed without people ever joining the server and seeing or partaking in the roleplay for themselves. It provoked a lot of bias and misconceived ideas, thoughts and opinions providing making decisions an intolerable part in how players highlighted Willard's leadership capability from top to bottom.
Lots of tickets went unanswered sometimes lasting forever before a member of staff looked at them along with some members at the time being inactive, causing a shortage of availability. We also spoke about what some people in the community meeting brought up: "Ban first, ask questions later" mentalities. That was forefrontal for some, as it was an occurrence treating the guidelines as the Codex Astartes. I think this was more prominent in early to mid 2022 but still had an impact up to the break starting. The "Rule Zero" ban was felt to be weaponised in some capacity in the past as it was also brought up in the meeting.
Lots of tickets went unanswered sometimes lasting forever before a member of staff looked at them along with some members at the time being inactive, causing a shortage of availability. We also spoke about what some people in the community meeting brought up: "Ban first, ask questions later" mentalities. That was forefrontal for some, as it was an occurrence treating the guidelines as the Codex Astartes. I think this was more prominent in early to mid 2022 but still had an impact up to the break starting. The "Rule Zero" ban was felt to be weaponised in some capacity in the past as it was also brought up in the meeting.
Staff structures are changed now and the guidelines will be thoroughly updated in the future. Just remember though that our staff are people too and that they make decisions every day on the community. It's always important to note that our staff do their absolute best in difficult situations, so I wouldn't put it past them if they have to make hard calls within a short time frame. I intend to build more support structures for our staff team so they can ease off stress buildup far better than what they were going through previously to maintain the server and community as a whole.
We spoke about the gameplay loop of the server, and how the server itself is viewed by you. This was one of the most important parts of the meeting because we asked this simple question:
3.1. "Do you believe Willard is a Serious RP server?"
Everyone in the chat stated it was an overwhelming no and for various reasons. Quality Control of roleplay was just non-existent, or people weren't able to provide that serious RP simply because the systems in place do not currently support it 100%. Activity we commit on the server like crafting, the RP-(Game) system, through various analyses, showed to commit to some form of an unserious environment. It was almost akin to semi-serious.
It contributed to people viewing the server through the lens of individuals who had personal biases for either various factions, groups and cliques treating it more like a PvP extravaganza rather than a serious roleplay server.
in a sense, faction polarisation was also highly present. It did fail to divert people away from creating characters with pre-created alignments. This was especially seen from forming OOC Cliques that were solely created to influence everything IC. That is almost, once again, akin to something semi-serious would see.
I want to reiterate that we are very much a serious-roleplay server, and the changes which I will be explaining down the line will be plans for the future, not immediate.
3.2. "Who are our playerbase consistent of and how did gameplay loop impact them?"
We spoke a great deal about who was involved in the community of Willard HL2RP and the origins of what this huge melting pot contributes itself to be. Like anywhere in any community; you will always get the mixture of players that differentiate in the capacity to undertake and understand what Serious Roleplay is. That also brings relevance to the intention of the player;
Are they interested or not interested to RP?
Are they more interested in the "chatbox" that the server provides?
Are the optics of the server somehow advertising it as semi-serious instead of serious?
THE LIST GOES ON.
Players need less of a loop and more free will than anything. It became clear to us that the gamemode provides too much of a linear loop that doesn't allow a lot of flexibility for roleplay. This meant that the overall consensus for how people enjoyed their time on the server was simply attributed to the skill system. Let's take a look at rebel roleplay for a moment and consider the mainstream fact that the only thing that provided rebels to do anything was... trash spawns. You joined the server, you loaded up your rebel character, you ran around the sewers or slums and the first thing that comes to mind is to jump into the nearest dumpster. This one little thing attributes to many others across the server - that was the only thing you could do and it contributed to roleplay being a tertiary backburning element to a roleplay server.
Load up the pressures of time management for a player finding their way through the City RP, current systems on the server aligned with affiliating to a specific attention span; it rewarded people for generally avoiding RP and didn't provide a meaningful impact to the character in any way. This therefore provided less efforts to be made within this linear loop, bringing only speculation to how and why a player will want to entertain themselves in that regard.
But this is what brings us to the discussion of the future of the server, in regards to an Iteration-Three / Version-Three many months down the line. This is not immediate, and anything spoken on this thread is a merely prophetic.
We are also lessening the RPG grip on the server and focusing far more on your individual freedom of roleplay, which has been missing for a while. We have various developmental projects in the theorems and works which will be suited for Version-Three of Willard, and not of Version-Two. But that doesn't mean we cannot experiment with what we have now, though!
4. The Future of Willard HL2RP & Addressing "Wipes"
4.1. The Whitelist
During the community meeting, we spoke a LOOOOT about plans for the server and what we envision it to be later in the year. Some were endorsed, others not so much. Everyone has their reasons to feel what they feel about these changes, but I will reiterate again: They will not impact the current iteration we are playing on. We are still playing on Iteration-Two / Version-Two. Please keep this in mind. You won't see this anytime soon.
Firstly, Version-Three will be a whitelisted server. The reasons for this are simple:
Willard has a minimalistic way of inviting the player onto the server, it doesn't visualise its own advertisement to the player arriving onto the server, and new players instantly have no idea what they're doing. This is to cater to that demographic because we are getting a major influx of new players don't have a clue what's going on. We are setting a server precedence.
The server produces a moderately sized box regarding hints of information about Willard, what the gamemode that you have joined is and some information about the setting the server takes place in (AKA Half Life Two.) It will link you to the forums and the new player will need to simply fill in a thread that will be looked at by staff. The questions will simply ask about what their Steam ID is and what type of character they intend to play. Psychological solidification and getting the brain working on imagination is the key ingredient to see what the intentions of the player is.
You won't need to read bibles of text, and this is to utterly replace the now failing quiz system which is malfunctioning on the server. The quiz system is also either too dead-straight forward to run through that a monkey will be able to hover over the questions and get them right without reading. This shows a clear lack of solidification and is providing a simple uncaringness to the player joining in. First impressions are important, and that's what I want to focus on for Version-Three.
4.2. Addressing Wipes
First of all, we are not pressing the nuclear launch button and committing server M.A.D. - AKA we're not hard resetting the server. There's about forty seven million different versions of wipe rumours floating around that you can only figure that one of those rumour types is correct. I'll keep it simple:
- Story Cleanup: The biggest complaint we keep hearing about is our lore on the server and how that contributes to the atmosphere. I'll admit, a good handful of our lore is built on earlier variants that existed in the year of 2019 when Willard was first founded. The lorefront changed about three times during this stages because we decided to involve the community in contributing to the lore. I won't say this was a bad move, but I will say that could have been handled better since the dawn of that decision. There will be a story and lore cleanup, not a wipe. It is important to simply list out what needs to be kept the same, rewritten or generally deleted from the server contributions and world map. The Creation Team is working on that, and they have a very good idea what needs to be done.
- Narrative Wipe: No, but various elements of our narratives have to be taken into consideration for V3 so they don't look "prestigiously outrageous" to the setting that is HL2. I'm sure various narratives will be kept the same - the ones that truly matter - but there will be a small scale back to some of our narrative resources so it doesn't effectively bloat the world we've made together as a community.
- Timeline Rewind: We'll be jumping to an alternative timeline where we haven't investigated. When V2 ends with a bang, you'll know V3 would be around the corner but that won't be for a long time. But I know what you will be thinking... "what about my characters?"
- Character Wipe: We're not doing a hard wipe but when V2 ends - so does your character storyline. This means only one thing; this is inevitable. But the reasons for this are also more complicated than that. We need something new and fresh to keep consistency in the playerbase and to keep interest retention levels. It will happen over time. We’ll have less and less players and eventually nobody will care to play should we stick with what we have... forever. The database is heavily strained currently and is issuing too much maintenance to fix with it constantly breaking. We're currently Improving our server database to ensure a DB refresh and a declutter of broken code helps to bring better performance to the server. We know this is incredibly hard to swallow and some of you will have a sour taste about this decision but - make no mistake - this happens to all HL2RP Communities in existence that last this long on one iteration. It's a shocker that we have managed to keep V2 running for this long with a steady pace. So, get excited for V3 because that in itself is a new journey far later in the year.
4.3. Proposed Projects Discussed
We spoke about whether or not the server was designed to be a 24/7 running server, something seasonal based or something that only ever appeared on a weekend. We did come up with a solution about how we want to maturely run this server, and that is simply called:
Lmfao. Anyway...
The server will not be open on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Those are always our days of the lowest population as confirmed by our analytics feedback through gametracker and other resources. We want players to have a smaller break when they come to play, so you along with ourselves can rest easy without having to always dedicate to the server.
We also spoke about what type of server we wanted to run, at least setting wise. We've gone from running the current status-quo, to a server based directly upon the end of the Seven Hour War and even Post-Occupation after Episode 2. We decided to keep with what we have and enjoy,
This was the decision we as a staff team have made throughout, along with the CMs involved during a certain staff meeting that was designed to talk about what the future can hold. Read the above regarding "addressing wipes" and you'll see why decisions like this were made.
And I also want to mention we won't be using Turn-Based-Combat (TBC).
We are a roleplaying server. Any "G" mechanics are meant to support your roleplay, some of them do interdict how the server entertainment value is driven.
I know you've been waiting to see the refutations of the Community Meeting if you weren't there, but here they are!
Have a nice day 
