Decline in RP Standards | Inappropriate RP

[MazuzaM]

GOOD EVENING LADS WHO ARE READING THIS

Have you perhaps noticed, especially if you are a long standing player in your community, that the server seriousness and Roleplay standards are going down the bin?

Does your experience even less dystopian than what it used to be? I will list every issue with the majority of the Factions as I witnessed first hand:

Citizens:
This is a mixed pot, there's some people who roleplay accordingly but it's a minority in confront to what I have seen.

- There is absolutely no sense or recognition of the situation you are in (20+ years of constant slavery, labour and malnutrition) and people tend to act the way they would in real life, directly breaking the rules under the FailRP Section

"------------- A character's / behaviour and view of the world should match the scale and sense of the world they're living in, not real life."

Civil Protection:
I'm sorry to say this, as a Civpro main, I am afraid that this faction is the one that had the biggest decline in RP Standards, there are so many problems in my opinion and others:

- Metrocops feel like high school bullies, there is no real surgical protocol to follow to interact with Citizens or preserve conversations in public. I feel Starboat bait is part of this problem.

- The idea of a kind Metrocop (Which is overdone) should be rarely done and more punished by Command. No, I'm not saying that your cop should be a sadic that finds pleasure in hurting other people, but keep in mind you passed years of indocrination no matter what if your character chooses a path in the Civil Protection, they should be displayed more surgically rather than some 70s cop in Brooklyn.

ESPECIALLY the problem resides with some Rank Leaders, they recieve the same Memory replacement as Transhumans, the guide clearly states that they should be feared yet they act like some cool coaches for the units and fail to make you feel oppressed.

Resistance:
I've also played the Resistance, RP Hubs are enjoyable but the problem still lingers with inappropriate Roleplay for characters as they are:
- Self Proclaimed Warriors and fearless fighers
- Semi Serious Minges who only play to S2K (Fewer minority)

Before you say ha ha here's the fun police, no, there's ways of enjoying Roleplay by doing it accordingly, this is what Willard HL2RP should be, not a sitcom of silly jokes and corny actions to get on the Starboard.

 

[MazuzaM]

Cops are still people, too. A great movie that portrays this is actually "End of Watch," which follows Officers Taylor and Zavala. When they're not working, they're always bullshitting, busting each other's balls, and so on. This is how normal people are, because Civil Protection are people too. If it is concerning to some in the community, there should be a drive for the Civil Protection command staff to set a standard for their officers.

Also, adding on my response from earlier, this is a big problem that you're refering to movies for how a character should act.

"End of Watch" portrays these funny and goofing off moments in a Patrol car, where they're isolated from the public and not doing anything else besides looking for crimes, not policing on order.

whilist Civil Protection Officers are on foot patrol which requires a tad of formation when you're walking and not casual walking like 2 friends would. It's totally different how could you demand that a Metrocop should be like this

 

[Lost Coast Chanties]

CivPro abandoned IC apps for this.

 

[Cavity]

I don't think you understand what I'm talking about in this post, I am not saying that Metrocops should be more aggressive;

I'm reporting these facts that mark a decline in Roleplay, cops shouldn't be more aggressive than they are, they should be more mature and professional respecting to the indocrination you suffer ICly, showing humanity doesn't mean slinging in starboard bait during 90% of your gameplay because you (random person in the pics) play a """""character"""".

This actively ruins the Dystopian feel of at least using professional language in the field and not be the kind cop literally not doing your job, your job isn't to kill Anti Citizens and keep everything intact, it's to preserve socio-stabilization and order/oversight on the people.

I see…. Well I didn’t get that at all from this post and I thoroughly read over it. If that’s what you’re after then I am 100% in agreeance because you are absolutely correct. I thought you had an issue with them goofing off in their personal time.

 

[Rebel RP Philosopher]

I think it's ChatGPT which has contributed to the roleplay standards falling so low, people used to be original

 

[toby]

I think it's ChatGPT which has contributed to the roleplay standards falling so low, people used to be original

could you elaborate

 

[Eviction Notice]

Picture this:

One day, you are playing, and then you get the passion to make a loyalist character! .... and then you wake up.

Take a step back and realize that, given how Willard Networks Civil Protection operates, it's unrealistic for anyone to be loyal to the Combine in this server. The way Civil Protection operates and its unusually cruel treatment of the civilian population make it impossible for such things to happen. The server should make rules for Civil Protection to be more empathetic and caring to citizens, so people ACTUALLY WANT TO PLAY AS NORMAL CITIZENS.

I've never read a bigger crock of shit in my life, HOOOOOLY.

 

[Rabid]

Casual chatter with random citizens like you believe could easily be restricted to you doing it with Collaborators, matching the feel, in my opinion cops should remain assertive and professional or surgical to an extent with lower grade citizens, not just chit chatting with em.

However most of it is IC issue but imo its not portrayed like it could be portrayed...

I actually agree with this to a degree. @Cavity brought it up too - treating citizens like dogshit 24/7 doesn't work the way it does in the source material because the citizens of Willard HL2RP can in fact walk into the slums, get a gun and shoot you in the face.

I've - personally - gotten so much more success as a CP when I've played by cultivating relationships with citizens who know I'm not going to flip out on them and beat them over the head, so they trust me enough to give me info.

The flipside to this attitude is when I've played abusive cops who flaunt their "friendly demeanor" as a threat. They do and say whatever they want because what can citizens do? So what if you know x about me? You can't report me, and if you try anything funny I'll kill you.

Both of these avenues give citizens more roleplay without encouraging them to steer clear of my unit (in the latter case they often did but more out of genuine IC "wow your character is intimidating" and not OOC "I get nothing out of this").

 

[MazuzaM]

I actually agree with this to a degree. @Cavity brought it up too - treating citizens like dogshit 24/7 doesn't work the way it does in the source material because the citizens of Willard HL2RP can in fact walk into the slums, get a gun and shoot you in the face.

I've - personally - gotten so much more success as a CP when I've played by cultivating relationships with citizens who know I'm not going to flip out on them and beat them over the head, so they trust me enough to give me info.

The flipside to this attitude is when I've played abusive cops who flaunt their "friendly demeanor" as a threat. They do and say whatever they want because what can citizens do? So what if you know x about me? You can't report me, and if you try anything funny I'll kill you.

Both of these avenues give citizens more roleplay without encouraging them to steer clear of my unit (in the latter case they often did but more out of genuine IC "wow your character is intimidating" and not OOC "I get nothing out of this").

I dont agree with you

 

[Cavity]

I actually agree with this to a degree. @Cavity brought it up too - treating citizens like dogshit 24/7 doesn't work the way it does in the source material because the citizens of Willard HL2RP can in fact walk into the slums, get a gun and shoot you in the face.

I've - personally - gotten so much more success as a CP when I've played by cultivating relationships with citizens who know I'm not going to flip out on them and beat them over the head, so they trust me enough to give me info.

The flipside to this attitude is when I've played abusive cops who flaunt their "friendly demeanor" as a threat. They do and say whatever they want because what can citizens do? So what if you know x about me? You can't report me, and if you try anything funny I'll kill you.

Both of these avenues give citizens more roleplay without encouraging them to steer clear of my unit (in the latter case they often did but more out of genuine IC "wow your character is intimidating" and not OOC "I get nothing out of this").

Exactly. Treating all citizens like dogshit every interaction, every single day only ruins the experience for citizens and only drives them to the slums and eventually to become rebels. Honestly just turn the server into a rebels vs combine at that point. Of course the CivPro mains disagree with this, as many of them are apart of the problem and not the solution. They have no idea this is actually happening in a mass scale either because they don’t care, or they never actually citizen RP for extended periods of time. And then they wonder why the plaza is so boring and people stay away from it. It’s because the only thing to do as a citizen in the plaza is get harassed by abusive CPs who fuck with you for no reason. It isn’t just one or two CPs doing it either, almost every active CP officer does this.

 

[joe moter]

ha ha here's the fun police

Before you say ha ha here's the fun police, no, there's ways of enjoying Roleplay by doing it accordingly, this is what Willard HL2RP should be, not a sitcom of silly jokes and corny actions to get on the Starboard.

 

[Rabid]

Exactly. Treating all citizens like dogshit every interaction, every single day only ruins the experience for citizens and only drives them to the slums and eventually to become rebels. Honestly just turn the server into a rebels vs combine at that point. Of course the CivPro mains disagree with this, as many of them are apart of the problem and not the solution. They have no idea this is actually happening in a mass scale either because they don’t care, or they never actually citizen RP for extended periods of time. And then they wonder why the plaza is so boring and people stay away from it. It’s because the only thing to do as a citizen in the plaza is get harassed by abusive CPs who fuck with you for no reason. It isn’t just one or two CPs doing it either, almost every active CP officer does this.

A lot of CP's just don't know how to do oppression right, honestly (I'm not saying I do either beyond not doing the obvious), and so they end up disrupting the roleplay of others and being viewed as soulless non-characters. When all you see of someone is them busting in to disrupt your roleplay or PK your character or whatever with very little in-character emotion, its easy to assume they're only doing it because they get a kick out of it.

Hence people being called Robocops.

And, truthfully? Willard has never been totally serious and the tone has always been over the place since launch. CP's just make the easiest target (not in a negative sense) because they're the most visible when they stray outside of what people expect.

 

[Lord Beckett]

It's like you've all forgotten that Overwatch literally has a gun pointed at the heads of family members of all CPs. You are not like regular cops. One mistake could mean the deaths of everyone you love. THAT is why the default attitude of CPs toward citizens should be hostility. Anyone out there could be an indirect threat to you and your family. You are afraid.

 

[Rabid]

It's like you've all forgotten that Overwatch literally has a gun pointed at the heads of family members of all CPs. You are not like regular cops. One mistake could mean the deaths of everyone you love. THAT is why the default attitude of CPs toward citizens should be hostility. Anyone out there could be an indirect threat to you and your family. You are afraid.

Honestly even this has always felt like people taking what is at best meant to imply the Combine could simply revoke keeping a CP's family together throughout relocations (as opposed to simply splitting them up like they do everyone else) and twisting it into some grimdark "THEY'LL HUNT AND KILL YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY IF YOU FAIL THEM!!!!".

Its nonsensical and deprives the Combine of able-bodied workers for next to no reason. They're cold and pragmatic, not pointlessly cruel. Its punishment enough that you could lose contact with your entire family and not know where they went - even then frankly I don't think they'd care enough to even split them back up. You'd never know regardless.

And even then, in terms of the server, the default attitude being total hostility across the board doesn't promote roleplay with citizens. It pushes people into not wanting to interact with cops for OOC reasons, not just IC ones, and that is a lot harder to fix. I can tell you from experience that being met with utterly hostile and aggressive units on my citizen didn't make me wanna give them more roleplay, it just made me go somewhere else on the map.

 

[Parsil]

Honestly even this has always felt like people taking what is at best meant to imply the Combine could simply revoke keeping a CP's family together throughout relocations (as opposed to simply splitting them up like they do everyone else) and twisting it into some grimdark "THEY'LL HUNT AND KILL YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY IF YOU FAIL THEM!!!!".

Yeah. They will kill you, and your entire family if you fail them.
The more you argue against this the more simply wrong you seem to be about the state of humanity in this universe.

 

[Rabid]

View attachment 47472
Yeah. They will kill you, and your entire family if you fail them.
The more you argue against this the more simply wrong you seem to be about the state of humanity in this universe.

That's said specifically to the OTA, not Civil Protection, and is used as a threat because Transhumans are still human enough to where the idea of being sent off-world forever isn't something anyone would logically want. But in the end its still a sensible choice for the Combine to use as a threat, because what will happen eventually to 99% of the OTA made anyway if the Combine win (before they work out how to clone them already augmented like they do Striders and other Synths as per Alyx).

By contrast, conflating Civil Protection's family cohesion being at risk to mean "they'll just kill them all if you are bad!!!" rather than the much more logical "they'll split them up again and you'll never know" is mustache-twirling evil territory. Its a relic of 2013-era Clockwork servers where making things as edgy as possible was the goal.

The Combine do use leverage to keep cops in line, ala carrot and stick - but it doesn't need to be overblown.

 

[Cavity]

It's like you've all forgotten that Overwatch literally has a gun pointed at the heads of family members of all CPs. You are not like regular cops. One mistake could mean the deaths of everyone you love. THAT is why the default attitude of CPs toward citizens should be hostility. Anyone out there could be an indirect threat to you and your family. You are afraid.

Another way of failing your job is also turning the entire civilian population against the regime YOU support because all you can think about is mindlessly droning around, cracking skulls, robbing, harassing, and killing people over minor inconveniences. Certain CivPro players are no better than the "rebels" and "slummers" that you are actively trying to crush.

You can always say, "This is how they act in HL2," but do they really? I never saw oppression and violence against civilians in HL2 to the extent that Willard Civil Protection players have put their citizen players under. You can argue lore, but that is all up to personal interpretation.

 

[Rabid]

Another way of failing your job is also turning the entire civilian population against the regime YOU support because all you can think about is mindlessly droning around, cracking skulls, robbing, harassing, and killing people over minor inconveniences.

It must be said; this works for CP's in HL2 because citizens have nowhere to go and have been actively under threat of violence for twenty years. Most citizens are apathetic. In-universe, it isn't a game and they only have one life.

That's impossible to properly simulate in Willard HL2RP when everyone knows its just a game that you can leave whenever you want if it isn't fun and/or just walk into the slums two streets away from the plaza and join the rebels.

An oppressive atmosphere is important, but most players don't know how to do it correctly and quite a few people don't seem to realise that if people don't get a positive experience with units at face value, they just won't interact with them in future. Pushing them into doing RP in alleys and stuff won't make it more likely to happen, it'll make it much less likely (as has been proven repeatedly).

 

[ford-michigan]

And it is good to point out not all people get a hard on for oppression RP. Some people, like me, find it depressing and just make me not want to play or interact with the people that do it a lot.

 

[Curbalas]

What kind of awesome is this

 

[Curbalas]

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