Is willard begining to fade?

[SpookyWolf07]

Another Merlin Grave Post

Now for my own personal anecdote for why I don't play anymore. I do have to state one of the primary reasons I no longer play on Willard is mainly due to how unfun the roleplay is. Or rather, how unfun joining every couple of days to find my main character has been BOL'd for the hundreth time in a row despite the fact I haven't been active enough to really do anything of importance. Other characters of mine are rather boring, I find that the CityRP is extremely lacking and extremely grindey. I'm not a fan of grinding massively just to lose all my progress because I don't play the server religiously because I have other things I care about aside from CityRP. Whether it be Loyalist or Rebel, or Citizen, or whoever the fuck I find myself barely able to keep my attention and ability to care about the server due to a rather unlucky experience.

Maybe back on 2017; I wouldn't be annoyed but its 2022. I'm practically an adult and I don't have time to flag on to constantly tell CPs to stop BOLing me or walk around the empty plaza and starve to death while stupid things occur.

Futurism is dead, Cole's Homeless Shelter is dead, CityRP is dead, and my ability to just tolerate it is dead. Maybe I'm completely and utterly wrong and maybe there'll be a Willard resurgence. But until then?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Pasta]

Doomer is posting bad.

The time of year is rough for finals, but also at the same time. Real life comes first. With the attacks and - whatever the fuck else. It's okay not to have a large population.

Though I will state this: Be the change you wanna see in the server.

 

[RedHotGinger]

Another Merlin Grave Post

Man's been banned from the server for over like two months. He really does not have much say in any problems it is currently undergoing, especially since he was the partial instigator of certain many problems when he was around (Taking IC matters OOC, Drama, Main character syndrome, toxicity, etc.)


Aside from that sidenote, its not for everyone. Willard has many problems, and I am nothing if not willing to bring them up. But, it isn't all bad, even at its worst. I may think the new PK rules are signs Willard is starting to slip into an aimless, script driven, server...but it isn't there yet at the very least. There is still time for things to matter, time for stories to be allowed to actually form. Willard will recover from this lull in players, its not the first time it has. The only question I ponder is who the server will be for in roughly two months or so. Serious players here to essentially write a cooperative story. Or those who are script-driven, and care about little beyond the personal 'win.'

Edit: Of course, the above is not the only issue the server has. Its just the one that seems to be the current focus of people. There are many others that will need addressed relatively soon. But again, time will tell.

 

[Equinox]

Futurism is dead, Cole's Homeless Shelter is dead, CityRP is dead, and my ability to just tolerate it is dead.

my thoughts essentially. You ask for a progressing story (that actually goes somewhere and remains in that place) but don't get it. You ask for features and changes that will bring about actual roleplay then since if we can't go anywhere we might as well make the game we're working with fun to RP in, but instead we get more features focused on items or grinding instead of creative implementations that encourage RP. So the players do it themselves by setting up their own interesting changes in the world by things like mentioned above, but you can't even have that, because for the sake of "Epic Dystopian City RP!" it gets shit on by the Combine.

You then become an adult, realize that tolerating this isn't worth your time in the face of better things one could be doing, and leave the server.

City RP is one of the worst game modes for HL2RP and it has been critically flawed and shitty to work with from the very beginning of its existance. Unfortunately, Willard falls under that, and while it may be the best example of City RP to date in my opinion, it's still City RP in the end.

 

[John Rico]

I would be playing if the conscripts faction was actually going somewhere, but that's a pandora box for another discussion.

At the end of the day server for me has the same problems that I've had with every other HL2RP city server; everything is so static. Even if you can somehow come up with and play a story for your character, their backdrop will always be a still image, which is lame. The Willard formula is worse imo because it all feels specifically designed to keep the Combine status quo: City 24 is a Combine model city hosting the Summit-government-thing and there's a legion of soldiers ready to crush any rebel presence that pops up, there's really no prospect of anything ever spicing things up in this specific setting.

 

[ShadoWiz4rd]

Mostly around this time it's the end of the semester for many so they must be busy with finals and what not. Vacation trips for the summer as well. I very much doubt Willard's end is here or coming near.

The DDoS attacks and crashes are something completely out of the player's hands. Crashes can be fixed, just possibly with every new fix there's another bug or something else to cause a crash. But it'll all die down soon and we'll be back to normal.

As for the 'lack of content' on the server. It's mostly just a lack of events recently. Not many admins get on now (to clarify just in case, not their fault and they aren't paid to be admin here. So they can do whatever they want with their free time). so not many events happen. Especially considering most of the time when they are on, they must be busy with tickets or trying to RP.

So personally I think you're exaggerating a bit or a bit too paranoid rather lol. Everything is fine.
View attachment 11186

But rank' If the server fades due to ddoss that's letting the terrorists win!

 

[ShadoWiz4rd]

I would be playing if the conscripts faction was actually going somewhere, but that's a pandora box for another discussion.

At the end of the day server for me has the same problems that I've had with every other HL2RP city server; everything is so static. Even if you can somehow come up with and play a story for your character, their backdrop will always be a still image, which is lame. The Willard formula is worse imo because it all feels specifically designed to keep the Combine status quo: City 24 is a Combine model city hosting the Summit-government-thing and there's a legion of soldiers ready to crush any rebel presence that pops up, there's really no prospect of anything ever spicing things up in this specific setting.

Conscripts don't usually preform very well apparently on the server hence why they're solely for events,
{Allegedly when we had the C2 Conscript event they were taking largely from the citizenrp/Citizen population)
When people join the Conscript faction it's typically the same reason (IMO). That someone would want to join say a gang or any faction really. What is needed is more areas for people without whitelists or a job to engage in daily activities or events the Militia's kind of fulfilled this niche for the first little while people need to take the imitative to a degree to create things, Look at our SLF Insurrection back early January that was completely player driven, It's up to the players to take imitative, Noones is stopping you from getting a gang together hell making a loyalist militia or those mall cop guys and doing conscript or wannabe cp stuff like forming checkpoints and searching people I feel given our setting this might fit better and in-turn would be more accessible to new players who are in turn if entertained with your rp and concept going to stay/come back for more. This being said, It's important that when people want to do these things that staff are supportive in that decision and offer a guiding hand along the way. There's no reason a group of people can't band together and create an "Underground" so to speak Loyalist militia, Even one that uses weapons, Maybe you could get in-touch with a corrupts CCA Member in-order to gather funds or supplies and the Militias could be used to engage rebels in counter guerilla warfare if Military rp is really what you're after.


Without ranting too long, TL DR Improvise shit, Make sure you talk to staff about it and get them to sign off on it. Make yourselves and or group accessible for new players while still vetting them/having some form of a standard as not to oversaturate the scene. People like to feel like they're apart of something special.

 

[Rabid]

You ask for features and changes that will bring about actual roleplay then since if we can't go anywhere we might as well make the game we're working with fun to RP in, but instead we get more features focused on items or grinding instead of creative implementations that encourage RP.

Honestly though, it sadly makes sense.

Willard's biggest selling points over other communities - even before launch - were the dev work and features. When the backbone of what draws people to try your server is the shiny coat of paint, you need to be prepared to keep making that paint look good or else people are going to complain. What is under the coat of paint doesn't matter.

My analogy is shit but what I'm trying to say is that people argued that minor features like beard growth or washing clothes would enhance roleplay when it reality it does absolutely nothing for it. Its a funny gimmick. Instead of the focus being on fixing the bigger core features (until recently) I think the assumption was that player retention could be kept simply by waving cool things in their faces.

The other disadvantage WN has is that all of this dev work is not easily transferable, nor does WN have its eyes set beyond Gmod. If HL2RP goes down the community doesn't really have a server where all of this work will be used.

 

[AdamCF]

I'm only not on because I have an exam in like, 3 hours

 

[Maroon]

Finally sweet release

 

[The_Grass_Man]

Willard is already dead, play fortnite

 

[Ruairidh]

This is universally applied to all servers at this time of year. We have entered the examination period academically, which is one of the reasons I haven't touched the server in a while except for short stories. A few of my peers are on the same boat.

I'm personally expecting a little hibernation period until the holidays themselves, arrive.

Also IDK what you mean about "Equinox DDOS attacks". Equi would not do that and I wouldn't ever see him do that. It was the host provider themselves that got hit by something related to the sort affecting their whole port and not us directly, which was an entirely one-off-situation. The crashes are a problematic issue and we have applied numerous fixes though the most and main perpetrator alludes us regarding crashes.

I hope this provides something of a clear answer until after the academic nightmare that has made itself clear these past few weeks.

^^^ NAT5s are ass rn


edit: read a bit more, should open up conscript faction it would be cool for there to be a divide in the combine where either CPs feel they are better than conscripts or conscripts feel they are better than CPs or some other shit idk

 

[ShadoWiz4rd]

^^^ NAT5s are ass rn


edit: read a bit more, should open up conscript faction it would be cool for there to be a divide in the combine where either CPs feel they are better than conscripts or conscripts feel they are better than CPs or some other shit idk

There already is, There has literally always been one. CP's see conscripts as dangerous, Cannon fodder or as criminals as most of them historically have been conscripted as an alternative to a terminal verdict. Conscripts are watched closely even in BETA they were searched beaten they're the combines bulldog they get beaten starved and abused and sometimes thrown into a meat grinder where using CP's or OTA Wouldn't make sense or would be too costly. Look at the casualty rates of the first load of Connie's from the London OP. Look at how many people tried deserting.


Hell if anything it should be Conscripts are ex rebels who gave info and sold out their own to save their kind or they're criminals who are essentially on death row awaiting a suicide mission, It shouldn't really be a reserve force that's what loyalist militia's are.


TLDR Cops=Loyalists=good guy. Conscript=trash=cannon fodder/useful idiot. The combine doesn't want conscripts to be anything more then a need to a meatgrinder. CP's are where the good noodles go If you want a faction you can get on daily and passive and experience that kind of stuff join Civil Protection or create a loyalist militia/neighborhood watch icly.

 

[Max vice]

Cole's Homeless Shelter is dead

This is wrong, after @Lyniv took over when cole died, he put a lot of effort in assisting new players within the shelter and he is doing his best to keep the shelter alive, despite the other forces trying to ICly abolish it actively like blowing it up or setting it on fire.

 

[Triviality]

Hello all, I'm Vanessa Lee, Hiatus CRP main extraordinaire.

I might as well put some perspective on why I stopped playing hl2rp at the moment and hope its worth of value

So yeah I was a City Union Main. I loved making workcycles and getting different factions involved in stuff for the city. Around the time I stopped playing, a new school semester started for me, as well as many social aspects of my life picking up. Simply put, I couldn't commit to the high time sink that CRP required. Especially in comparison to some players whose dedication is difficult to match.

But around the time I quit, the storyline of the server felt conclusive. The huge Xen attack (Kassandra death Arc) felt like a huge close of a chapter in the Willard storyline, and with a slow drip on content I just resolved that I could take a break for a day or two. I come back on after that break, and realize that a bunch of tools I used for building and construction (Weight, Winch, Pulley, Etc) just were not able to be used. This kind of sucks because the construction tab is really useful for some people who wanted to make creative workcycles, like giant turbines and such, so without feeling like I had the tools to make my workcycles at the time, I just felt right to make the decision to go on hiatus and politely decline the potential promotion to CWU supervisor coronel and co. offered me at the time

Also just general burnout. I'm very much a Vanilla purist of the games and my roleplay. I'm not a fan of conscripts, or fancy schmancy City Administration or all the weird branches of the business' (See "CBU Criticism incident") And at the same time all MORE of that was starting to develop. With it came more rules both OOCly and ICly to follow and certain elements of roleplay became more of a chore, more of people taking their jobs way too seriously, than it did about just having fun. At the end of the day, the way I roleplayed and the character I wanted to portray was always under the scope of "This is a videogame and pretend in a universe intended to entertain. Im gonna have fun and let others have fun and not be such a stick in the mud"

This feeling is even more poignant because I get that WIllard wants to crackdown on the non-serious and the minges, but my fondest memories of the server was when a fucking BORING street conversation was interrupted by some crackhead going "/me shits all over the combine statue" and making CP's chase him around the plaza.

Also cops we're just coralling loyalists and beating them just because???

--also this is a nonpoint but I noticed that certain players we're making it a contest to make an outrageous character and beeline to whatever it was I was doing to get a drawn page in my bio--


TLR - restricted tools make creative faction GM (CWU, CMU) /me fests and not fun
-Low content drip, which isn't fair, especially for soem but for me i got bored sorry (You don't need scripts to RP crowd) (I want my cigar )
-Intense and Serious shift in player mentality, where less people are wanting to just have fun and instead want to punish anyone whose not 100% super serious intense AMC drama writers
-A storyline that ended a chapter in a satisfying climactic part only to put the pilot of the dramatically lost character in the same position (not their fault)
-Increased OOC expectations of players made participating in the factions less about doing stuff in game and more about having homework outside of the game

All this combined is NOT the reason I stopped playing (That was university) but it is the reason I don't feel the need to upkeep by giving an hour or day to visit the server. I have NO clue how the environment of the server is in the past month or so, but if these trends continued, it probably isn't hard to see why people are also having a burnout, which doesn't mean the server is dying, it might just mean people need to take a breather

 

[Lyniv]

Its natural for people to leave. Just like how people play video games and get bored of them, long-term commitments like HL2RP are the same way, its just more rooted in life changes.

Also doomerposting is bad, especially if you feel a certain way, but when a server is still reaching 40-50 players, which is half of its capacity, mind you, I hardly would call it dead. And that is during FINALS week. One thing you have to remember is old guards are more prone to finally have life changes and make that cut to leave the server. New players can make this choice too. But people tend to look only at the people complaining and the people leaving then the pros. Why? Because who actively compliments the passive things we have on Willard? No, its natural for people only to verbalize the cons as a means of awareness. This is natural, this is how humanity works. If people didnt do that, it'd be a problem in and of itself.

Back to my simple point. RP is storytelling. Stories have a beginning and end. To make it not so abstract, the same can be said for the players here. We are storytellers, and eventually even our stories can all come to an end. My story began a month ago, and we don't yet know when it will end, but I won't be here forever. Instead of moaning about when that end will be, I plan to make every moment I'm here memorable, just like I did on SCG. Those years were the best storytelling years of my life. I can vividly remember every little thing that happened. Every moment, from my EpU lying to my DvL about a deal with rebels that eventually got the DvL executed and my EpU smugly promoted. About my rebel doing his best to simply try and keep a kid safe, from dealing with man who revived the Tunnel Snakes on a fucking HL2RP server. It was all great. And I plan to have just as many memorable moments on Willard as I did then.

Everyone tells stories in a different way, thats what makes the whole narrative of Willard compelling. And its certainly not over.

A lot of people who are doomer posting are also just... Not active that much either? Why would someone who hasn't been around recently know our current struggles, and that of staff? Its almost like the people who are active don't feel like its fading at all....

 

[Imperator RAD-X]

I get it guys, really 100% that I do know where you are all and each are coming from. HL2RP City RP is in a living controversy since its first inception back when it was physically HL2RP deathmatch before it jumped onto GMOD. The whole ordeal regarding the server is that with the current precedence of the server being entirely "stagnant" (and I do say in quotes) is due to the issue of not having a direct and fitting server narrative. At least for the moment, things are expected to change next week but I won't be available then. I'll be away with family for that day and back the day afterward.

I'd be the one to argue that the current stimuli for the server is healthy, but the inaction is not in terms of its roleplaying capacity the server is very much able to produce - however we've been very busy outside of the server a majority of the time. Staff included, as I do speak for them in terms of the tickets and questions they face on the daily. To me they're under-rated and they deserve their shout-out in this thread, same with the players that did put their trust and support in Willard since the beginning. YES, there are problems. But I'll be pretty honest, a server "without problems" is one that puts its head in the sand and pretends they don't exist.

Overall, while the main server is the hub for what established the rest of the community servers or HL2RP in general with more and more propping up is either Expedition-type servers or Short-Stories & Private type servers running on seasonal settings. Server attrition rates rise based on continual activity and the ability to adapt and keep up to the overall demands of a growing playerbase. The development team and the server itself is constantly at that - there's another thing I want to put into perspective.

See, our server has hidden but toggled systems that can either activate or deactivate the more hardcore elements of the RP, including starvation, dehydration and further gas consumption scales, etc. Stock systems included for businesses and the like. Look, there's a lot. Our systems are able to comprehend the balance between the hardcore and the arcade, which is mostly set inbetween with certain systems toggled off to avoid... well, the city being a graveyard. Oh but don't worry, I assure you that things will change coming forward where people that want to commit into the leap of faith into the harder elements will get to do that. It's what a lot of the players and myself have personally wanted to see and to experiment with.

You all need something to focus on that the server needs to dive into, and while there is a plan set in motion that's practically on a direct collision course with the playerbase to do just that. It will all come down to the activity of businesses and the Combine Administration, GMs putting out events and players taking the initiative to actually do something... rather than following the worst and most hideous clockwork quote in existence:

"Don't find action, let it come to you." <---- This is a terrible "HINT". Some people still follow for some very strange reason that I will never understand.

Systems like hygiene, specific health conditions, disease & decay, etc etc etc... they would all be VERY FASCINATING elements a server like Willard could have, though they need a concept, a dedicated amount of time to produce and a compatibility check - you name it. Systems like Equi and others said would enhance the RP capability and not endless holding of the W key following your CP patrol routes as a citizen. I agree, the server needs more of that which is fully interactable and or a barrier / threat to the character that can be focused on.

Besides, the server hit a cap of 50+ today. If the server were beginning to fade / fall apart, trust me... we'd be the first to realise before the majority of the playerbase would be able to figure out.

We can continue this conversation when the examination period is over.
Just try not to dwell on the server "somehow fading" when the activity is still at a form of peak. Like said, most of us aren't really around because of that one major problem or sheer coincidence.

ANY CONCERNS, DM OR MESSAGE ON THE FORUMS. I'll bring all of your concerns up to my peers and we'll talk about it in full detail, as all elements are considered. But this thread is just causing a bit of unnecessary doom to a rather positive environment at this time.