Discussion Focus on fixing the City rather than side projects/side factions.

[Rabid]

I know the instant reaction is going to be "but RebelRP is a core faction!" to which I'll agree - but not as it is right now.

RebelRP has seen over a year's worth of changes and tweaks, including an entire map edit built around giving them more space at the expense of the main portion of the city. The city itself, meanwhile, has seen any activity that wasn't people debating about shops again.

The server thrived when the city was the focus and things were attempted. Was RebelRP in a bad spot? Maybe, if you consider "bad" to be a purely semantic thing of "they're not actively freedom fighting" - but I'd argue they provided more to the city than absolutely any other group in recent memory. They were able to thrive because the city bounced off of them. Even the CA managed to get in on things with them, which literally could never happen today.

"Oh but it had issues-"
"Oh but they weren't real rebels-"
"Oh but there was nepotism-"

Sure, maybe, but at least the city was active and organic. At least you had a talented cast of writers and players that wanted to do things and everyone could (and did!) bounce off of eachother.

Someone said "WN caters to a surface Resistance" but right now that isn't true. It was the case at one point but it seems that has been tossed by the wayside. You won't magically pop out the other side and be able to fix that if you dig deeper into it.

Tl;dr The more effort that goes into providing Rebels with more guns and gear (that they'll literally never use anyway because its a mentality issue) as opposed to switching the focus away from them for a while for the city and forcing them to adapt again the worse the situation gets.

 

[Robert]

Hmm, I don't think anyone is actually focusing on fixing the issue with Rebels. Sure the last 2 suggestions (Mine and M!NT's) refer to RebelRP and while M!NT's post goes into the grind factor and anti-rp factors of Rebels, we do also, in turn, tackle the issue of the City as well.

My post regarding economics for example is aimed primarily at fixing the economy rather than 'Rebels' itself. A working economy is what I believe to be a good start to focusing on fixing some of the many broken systems in Willard creating the mentalities we have to this date and getting everything running again.

The 3rd suggestion before both of the "Rebel" suggestions was character traits which focuses more on RP than anything else which is important since it shows some of us are now focusing on the RP aspect. This is good because just focusing on the City does not magically repair RP nor fix the server. If anything, there should be a focus on fixing the server overall rather than just "The City" which is extremely vague in itself.

Also, I don't think many people care about Rebels too much right now apart from the Discord discussions in the Development section and the one or 2 posts on the forums regarding them. Everything else points more of a focus on RP and "the City" than anything else. The end goal should be to drag Willard back into a spot where the City feels alive again, and RP is semi-restored to its original point, though as many have correctly assumed, this will take quite a long time and a lot of effort from staff, players, factions and devs. Definitely not a one-man job.

 

[Rabid]

Hmm, I don't think anyone is actually focusing on fixing the issue with Rebels. Sure the last 2 suggestions (Mine and M!NT's) refer to RebelRP and while M!NT's post goes into the grind factor and anti-rp factors of Rebels, we do also, in turn, tackle the issue of the City as well.

But the problem with this is that you're only emboldening a playstyle that WN is supposedly against - that of the armed and geared fighter who'll squat away in the sewers. I know the idea is "if things are easier to get they'll do more" but that often falls flat no matter what you do. If Rebels refuse to operate in a certain way - on the surface - they stop feeling like part of it and instead become a drain (literally) on the rest of the server.

I don't mean to sound like I don't appreciate the genuine care you've put into your suggestions, its just frustrating to know that the server used to be in a much better place because (to be a bit harsh sounding here) RebelRP was mostly forced to interact with the city - rather than the other way around.

 

[Imperator RAD-X]

The more effort that goes into providing Rebels with more guns and gear (that they'll literally never use anyway because its a mentality issue) as opposed to switching the focus away from them for a while for the city and forcing them to adapt again the worse the situation gets.

The end goal should be to drag Willard back into a spot where the City feels alive again, and RP is semi-restored to its original point, though as many have correctly assumed, this will take quite a long time and a lot of effort from staff, players, factions and devs.

It's these two modules that my peaked interest to leave a flag on the moon with inscribed writing: "Let the players do what they want."

The server absolutely was harming itself by restricting its playerbase and diversifying on projects based upon personal desire which ended up being non-inclusive and tight knitted. Top quality, but "only for me and not for thee". Which means the ones that did were of frigid quality where they were uninspiring, and left a bad taste in people's mouths.

Its prescribed domino effect scared off the rest of the independent activity of players via all the different groups that had freedom of movement to conduct their cordial balance of roleplay interaction in late 2021 to early 2022. Referring to the Cybercafe and all of the different little organisations and stores that operated in plain sight, but some of them were secretly rebel aligned. That stopped dead the moment there was forced changes on how people could physically relate rebel RP to civilian RP.

Which means - guess what everybody - that ended up provoking what it is to this very day. It was a slow burn, to a fast burn, then a slow burn again. Literally our own fault lmao

So when you stop letting players do what they want to do, they get directed straight into a dark cave and never to be seen again unless they're going out finding abysmal trash spawns to fulfil their need to build their never used gun collection.

 

[Robert]

Its prescribed domino effect scared off the rest of the independent activity of players via all the different groups that had freedom of movement to conduct their cordial balance of roleplay interaction in late 2021 to early 2022. Referring to the Cybercafe and all of the different little organisations and stores that operated in plain sight, but some of them were secretly rebel aligned. That stopped dead the moment there was forced changes on how people could physically relate rebel RP to civilian RP.

You pretty much hit the nail on the head.

I have a lot of extreme anger to mention in one of my upcoming suggestions directed towards Willard and its Staff + Faction Leaders in how they have actively driven Willard into the corner that it is today. Some of the actions it directly took effectively cut GOOD systems and links in half and caused a massive divide. But one which would not show itself until later down the line and something I spent my time screaming at some factions for their nigh idiotic behaviours.

I will go more into this down the line when the thread finally comes out which will be my store's thread going deep into what actually went horribly wrong. Also, its going to have quite a lot of rant warnings plastered at the top because it is a problem that wouldn't of happened given restrictions were never at play.

 

[M!NT]

I know the instant reaction is going to be "but RebelRP is a core faction!" to which I'll agree - but not as it is right now.

RebelRP has seen over a year's worth of changes and tweaks, including an entire map edit built around giving them more space at the expense of the main portion of the city. The city itself, meanwhile, has seen any activity that wasn't people debating about shops again.

This is a double edged sword.

Yes, city RP is somewhat important but, at the end of the day, we can't just focus on that. I think a really sad amount of effort was put into a faction that was not set up to succeed. Disappointing.

These things have cascading effects though and, I'm someone who is more interested in fixing the root cause behind an issue.

If we do not give city rebels the support they need in order for them to exist, then the city RP will be a shell of what it could be. This is because, the sad fact of the matter is, that rebels need a lot of support for them to work right. I've talked about this for years. The expectation was that we could put in crafting and skills and whatever else, and let people build their own groups. Thats fine and all but, it won't work at a large scale. Never has, never will.

The reason why they have a lot of attention on them now is because we've finally learned this as a community. I've worked hard for months to slowly shift the narritive away from this being a 'playerbase issue'. Now the community is in alignment on what the root issue is: Rebels just have never been given good leadership, direction, and support as a faction.

Without rebels working at their best, you have a city which descends into loyalist oriented RP. In that case, all of the players spend their time doing CWU workshifts. Eventually this gets boring and people lose interest, which is what we're seeing now.

TL;DR I think a lot of time was wasted on trying to fix a system that was rotten at the core. To remove the weeds properly, we have to pull up their roots, which is what I think we're trying to do now. However, it is true that the city was not given enough focus and I think, when we relaunch, that will be resolved (if we can keep CT on a tight leash). Like I said, double edged sword, we need to focus on both fronts rather than one or the other.

Its prescribed domino effect scared off the rest of the independent activity of players via all the different groups that had freedom of movement to conduct their cordial balance of roleplay interaction in late 2021 to early 2022. Referring to the Cybercafe and all of the different little organisations and stores that operated in plain sight, but some of them were secretly rebel aligned. That stopped dead the moment there was forced changes on how people could physically relate rebel RP to civilian RP.

Its a balancing act. People should ultimately be free to do what they want, but we also need to be mindful how those things effect the rest of the server. If one faction becomes too dominant, it hurts everyone else. For this to work there needs to be an active resistance, and the combine can't be snuffing these things out before they have a chance to work.

All I'm saying is, that with a well oiled and functioning resistance, it makes things better for everyone. For that resistance to work, it requires some very careful work as laid out in my earlier thread, and constant communication with CT and CP faction leads. This is all possible.

Also, something that was overshadowed by my thread (which was a mistake on my part) is a focus on 'refugee RP'. People who aren't specifically members of the resistance, but still live out in the slums. If there's a community out there for them to be a part of, it offers those players a lot more opportunities.

In that scenario, I imagine these businesses will be probed by the refugee community leadership for support in order to support the cause. I could imagine a situation where the owner of a shop uses their hefty profits in order to provide food and other relief to the refugees in their 'back yard' so to say. Right now players don't have the option to do that, because no such thing exists.

 

[Rabid]

Its prescribed domino effect scared off the rest of the independent activity of players via all the different groups that had freedom of movement to conduct their cordial balance of roleplay interaction in late 2021 to early 2022. Referring to the Cybercafe and all of the different little organisations and stores that operated in plain sight, but some of them were secretly rebel aligned. That stopped dead the moment there was forced changes on how people could physically relate rebel RP to civilian RP.

I agree with letting players do what they want (that's been the core of my frustration with WN), but I also think the community has to be mindful of how much that can impact people. Ie; see what happened when the staff team effectively tossed the "our Resistance is surface based" mantra in the bin and everyone got a suit and several guns - they naturally ran to the sewer to be safe and that only got worse over time.

The Cybercafe and other associated gangs and groups are, to me, the absolute peak of what RebelRP should be to interact with CityRP. Not a heavily armed army squatting in the sewers, y'know?

So I think we agree as a whole.

The biggest problem for me is one I'll hit on below though.

I have a lot of extreme anger to mention in one of my upcoming suggestions directed towards Willard and its Staff + Faction Leaders in how they have actively driven Willard into the corner that it is today. Some of the actions it directly took effectively cut GOOD systems and links in half and caused a massive divide. But one which would not show itself until later down the line and something I spent my time screaming at some factions for their nigh idiotic behaviours.

If I had a penny for every time a dedicated and active player that did something that actually genuinely excited people was mocked by staff, had their idea torn out at the roots and tossed aside with the promise "we'll bring this back but better lol" only for it to never happen and the idea left to die as the player quit I'd have a lot of money.

How many times did a well-meaning player articulate that more freedom was going to keep the server alive have to get some shitty response and a thread lock during that period? A lot. The level of ego I saw in late 2021/Early 2022 from staff was gross. Like, genuinely horrible. It was open and in the public eye, too. Then months later when the server started to genuinely falter (as every big community does) panic set in and excuses started to be thrown around with a "well it wasn't THAT good..." whenever people pointed out the VERY obvious reasons.

WN's staff saw a playerbase with a golden gun having fun, slapped them, took the gun away, shot themselves in the foot trying to do the same thing then angrily threw it aside and limped away bleeding, still angrily promising they'd do it better than the players.

This was one of the biggest reasons that the city suffered as hard as it did and why 80% of WN's playerbase is now semi-serious Impulse refugees with poor RP skills rather than genuinely good and solid contributors.

 

[Rabid]

Without rebels working at their best, you have a city which descends into loyalist oriented RP. In that case, all of the players spend their time doing CWU workshifts. Eventually this gets boring and people lose interest, which is what we're seeing now.

I think you and I also agree, but where we differ is what that direction should take, perhaps?

To me, WN throwing aside its efforts to shape The Resistance into something that was city-centric rather than an armed batallion was one of the worst decisions that could have been made, because it was one of the biggest turning points that quite literally started to death of the city.

If the Resistance is being shaped, it shouldn't be shaped to walk the same path. It shouldn't be about more gear and guns; it should be less incentive to sit in the sewers via very little happening and more focus on interacting with the city as all of the groups used to.

 

[M!NT]

I think you and I also agree, but where we differ is what that direction should take, perhaps?

To me, WN throwing aside its efforts to shape The Resistance into something that was city-centric rather than an armed batallion was one of the worst decisions that could have been made, because it was one of the biggest turning points that quite literally started to death of the city.

If the Resistance is being shaped, it shouldn't be shaped to walk the same path. It shouldn't be about more gear and guns; it should be less incentive to sit in the sewers via very little happening and more focus on interacting with the city as all of the groups used to.

Yes, we agree very generally speaking.

Where our opinions differ on this is on dropping support for rebels.

I feel like a lot of effort went into them, and the wrong people were put in the wrong places. HL2RP is all about having the right people in the right places, after all. There were a lot of bad decisions that led to all that work getting wasted.

Yet, we can't just throw up our hands and say that we're going to change directions though. We need to pull it up by the roots and plant something that will work in its place. This does not require the entire community to do though, and work towards getting City RP interesting again is being done currently and will continue to be done.

For more information towards what we plan on doing, this post is likely going to act as a launching pad for this going forward.

 

[Kappatalist]

I wrote something on the other thread before I read this, so I'll repost it here in a spoiler because it ties into this pretty much exactly. But I totally agree in that RebelRP was in a way better shape previously, at the time I hated not being able to sit in the Canals like I could on TN but like you've said, Rebels are not a core faction, and really, Citizens and the City should be the focus of the server because it's CityRP. Rebels walking around the slums in gear that they can't use is of no use to anyone else - expeditions ideally need to be better, at least the last time I tried doing any and knew people who were. Because that is for the most part, where rebels should be doing these things they want to do.

Spoiler: Rant

(LFC WAS SUPPOSED TO DO THIS) build a community of refugees out in the slums. Use the items coming from their supply lines to act as supplies for the community. ICly find capable characters and delegate the following tasks to them.

1. Build a clinic
2. Clean up the decrepit and abandoned buildings
3. Set up a kitchen to feed the needy, and the kitchen via supply lines. (more impactful if death from hunger/thirst is turned back on)
4. Enact a list of rules for the community, and pick characters to see to it that those rules are followed.

I wanna talk about this point in particular, coming back to this after yesterday. Something like this was avoided for a long time because it has an obvious problem: giving rebel players a place in the slums to hide away from the main 'city' will kill off said main city if there's no reason to be there. This hurts Citizen and Loyalist RP, and I think Citizens are probably the most important faction and what every decision should consider.

This was purposefully avoided by Willard early on by making the slums a very dangerous place to be, but nowadays CPs rarely sweep for fear of upsetting rebels/being overwhelmed by arguably better supplied groups than them.

In my own opinion the slums should stop being seen as a separate entity to the 'city' and simply be seen as a more shadier side of town where the long arm of the regime can in fact still reach (like it was on launch, minus the alpha headcrabs and hordes staff put there for some reason). The server can't support an opposing Loyalist and Rebel district, they can't go unchecked here because sooner or later it'll just turn into Shanty Town 2.0 and we've been there, done that - it sucks.

Events are being covered by other people and I'm confident we'll have something good at the end of it, so I'll just focus on the idea of a rebel community in the slums (I'm aware you specifically said refugees, but like the homeless shelter, if it's not considered people will openly be rebels here). Rebels always need to be mingled in with the Loyalists and Citizens - like I said earlier, Citizens are the faction in HL2RP that need to be catered to. Throughout the months it seems Willard's strayed from it's original idea of unarmed surface rebels only donning gear when need be, and it's been slowly turning into the same sewer rebel type of scene it's been trying to avoid from the start. Certainly when I was staff it'd be quite common to see people running around the slums in their full gear, this isn't exactly helped by the fact I'm aware that a few staff BMD characters have encouraged other players to join in by doing this themselves.

The easy solution I see would be to increase CP patrols and sweeps in said slums, that's easier said than done though. CP's obviously don't want to patrol and sweep when there's a big risk of being killed, but by not doing so the problem will grow to the point I've mentioned before. Likewise, rebel players will always complain when they're killed by a CP sweep regardless of what they were doing at the time. I'd like to hear opinions about this, especially from CP players.

tl;dr make sure it stays as a refugee/outcast community and not some public revolutionaries walking around like it's the storming of the Bastille. I know people don't like this, but it will kill the server.

Back then all rebel groups owned a store, all of them were in factions like CMU, CWU and hell, even CP. They didn't spend 80% of their time in the sewers, hell, Sunrise didn't even get to the sewers until several months in to which point they were stocked with hatchets, bandannas and pipe rifles. (Rad-X narrating the entire Star Wars trilogy for us was one of my favourite moments in HL2RP, not a single script - but over a dozen people just enjoying conversation and the background of the film.)

Don't abandon rebels, but also, take them in the direction of integrating with the city fully like they did at launch, a lot of these players are new to HL2RP in general and of course the first thing they want to do is get out there and kill some scrombine. They don't know anything different, this isn't the gamemode they're used to, for the most part.

Spoiler: You might not like it, but this is peak rebelRP.

 

[Imperator RAD-X]

Spoiler: You might not like it, but this is peak rebelRP.

View attachment 18196

I literally sat there in that same position for an hour when that screenshot was taken, in observer, using /it to describe the players watching Star Wars: A New Hope up to the point the Death Star destroyed Alderaan.

I'd do it all over again with the painful decrepit hands of continual typing.

 

[TheDeNuke]

Well as the former administrator Equinox had stated in one of his countless suggestion threads - Citizen RP and the city itself is far more important then any other faction. However, rather then take the approach of trying to shove Rebel RP back into the City RP again without further thought or attempting to increase the amount of oppression in the sewers via furthered CP or OTA raids. We need to source the point where everything had collapsed and the rebels felt that they needed to become your standard "sewer" rebels/webuls to survive.

It was when the DOB/BOE went out of control.

It was when the system of business audits became so extreme that it was impossible to create "resistance lead stores" and that in turn resulted in several resistance factions getting purged from their businesses and increasingly pushed into a corner in which the only method of faction survival was that of secret bases and living in sewers since that was the only valid method to use the crafting system without being caught by a endless spree of audits.

I'm afraid to say it, but this process of "locking down" the combine factions and businesses to only loyalists that started in V1 due to Madcombat and his massive infiltration efforts which had blindsided the CCA has ultimately resulted in the server formula eventually reverting to the default HL2RP.

@Robert @Imperator RAD-X I think that to have any hope of restoring what had once existed would be to remove/decrease the bureaucracy and systems of auditing from the Combine Factions. That should enable the resistance factions to start infiltrating businesses and government organizations again without being overpressured to the point where they feel the only way they can survive is living in the sewers.

 

[M!NT]

Well as the former administrator Equinox had stated in one of his countless suggestion threads - Citizen RP and the city itself is far more important then any other faction. However, rather then take the approach of trying to shove Rebel RP back into the City RP again without further thought or attempting to increase the amount of oppression in the sewers via furthered CP or OTA raids. We need to source the point where everything had collapsed and the rebels felt that they needed to become your standard "sewer" rebels/webuls to survive.

It was when the DOB/BOE went out of control.

It was when the system of business audits became so extreme that it was impossible to create "resistance lead stores" and that in turn resulted in several resistance factions getting purged from their businesses and increasingly pushed into a corner in which the only method of faction survival was that of secret bases and living in sewers since that was the only valid method to using the crafting system without being caught by a endless spree of audits.

I'm afraid to say it, but this process of "locking down" the combine factions and businesses to only loyalists that started in V1 due to Madcombat and his massive infiltration efforts which had blindsided the CCA has ultimately resulted in the server formula eventually reverting to the default HL2RP.

@Robert @Imperator RAD-X I think that to have any hope of restoring what had once existed would be to remove/decrease the bureaucracy and systems of auditing from the Combine Factions. That should enable the resistance factions to start infiltrating businesses and government organizations again without being overpressured to the point where they feel the only way they can survive is living in the sewers.

Hard yes

 

[Robert]

I will bring this up in one of my future suggestions so the suggestion is not cramped into some random post somewhere but

Essentially everything DeNuke, Kappa and so on have said is true. Willard for too long has given factions FAR TOO MUCH autonomy, and someone needs to reign them all in line. I know that sounds extremely harsh and some FLs may even feel threatened by such a statement given they have lived under their own rules for so long now.

I will say some Leads do great things, others do bad, and some are just humans making regular mistakes as we do. But as we know, the Combine factions back in the day went out of control when dealing with Rebels, and the idea we once made clear in District 47 which was the City was the hub and Slums/Sewers SHOULD NOT be a casual ground was extremely well done. Just over time as DeNuke put it, DOB and BOE went out of control after D47 ended, and proper rebels started threatening the whole structure of the CCA and City via their infiltration methods.

The Rebels were, on the surface, growing more powerful than anyone noticed and when they finally did, rather than let it happen and deal with the whole issue ICly. They implemented OOC ground rules and restrictions for the player and their IC person. Before you knew it, MOC moved in and wiped out every single rebel store in the City, purged the entire system dry of anything that made it entertaining and nuked the whole board.

This impacted Rebels badly, and on top of that, the minority we had bitching at the time got listened to, and we kicked CPs out of slums and eventually even stopped treating it as part of the City... big mistake. On top of that, further still, we listened to the "Sewers too deadly" complaints threads and gave Rebels a hidey hole to rot and die in as they were forced out of the City and into the slums and below.

Anyone who says the above statement is a player mentality, you would be correct in the sense that yes, it was one, but at the same time it is wrong in the sense that it is not the source of the blame. WE took everything away from rebels in the City. WE were the ones who added the regulations and rules, forcing surface rebels to no longer be viable against OUR OWN VISION. WE were the ones who then built V4 and prematurely wiped out all remaining hubs of RP. You can't blame players for the server's failings.

If we were to put the blame, it would only be on ourselves and how we allowed factions to reign supreme in their own view. Without restriction or control. The only faction which was criticized around this time was OTA despite following the original prime directive of Willard which was to ensure the sewers were deadly at all times and to maintain a heavy sense of fear and oppression when they were about. But we of course threw that out the window because of the itty bitty whiners rather than focusing on the real issue of why the OTA was becoming such a problem for Rebels in the first place... which in short was again, the other CCA factions which drove rebels out and forced them into Zombie, Barnacle, Antlion, OTA, Xen/Race-x Hell.

Stores had lost purpose, the Economy broke, the script/loot was handed out like no tomorrow further enforcing hide in the slums/sewers moment and events stopped caring about giving rewards and just told lame, boring stories. Excluding SS which constantly told quite well-written and fun entertaining events. Sure, SS lacked reward but at least it made you have a sense of achievement when the event was over and all was not for nothing because each event had a major impact of its own design on the world.

In short, Willard shot itself in the foot a long time ago and its time to change. V3 should take what we had in the past like I am doing with my current suggestions alongside M!NT's and begin hammering ourselves down back to normalcy, the place where Willard once was. And hell we don't just need to go back if you want; we can make something even better if we focus on it.