PK Policy & Rebels

[ford-michigan]

I think with rules in general it should be noted that this is a project headed by people outside of a government body. But our assumptions for order tend to go towards courts and settled cases or people who can settle those cases, but for obvious reasons there is not a court for this server. I saw above arguments of extreme examples which were said to show conflicts and sure, it could, but also logic should prevail here. I can't find it but there was a Wikipedia page talking about a-possibly real-roman magistrate who was presiding over a case where a man was accused of killing his friend. In this the magistrate ordered that the missing man show himself and if he did not by a certain time the man accused would be killed. After some time the man did not appear but then as the magistrate was about to carry out the sentence the man appeared. After some thought the magistrate still condemned the man to death and also did the same to the other man reasoning that he had been responsible for his friend's death. There was later outrage at this magistrate and later he faced punishment. The lesson here is it is good to follow rules strictly but also use logic to decipher implied meaning.

Basically, don't be the person who says that because doing a very specific thing is outlawed or listed on something means that it is fine. Constitutions-in this case main rules-are meant to be general and not to fit every specific situation because that would be unfeasible, but at the same time there can be specific rules but those are for small and/or listed sets of situations and still must have logic applied in reading the rule.

Now for the rules themselves, I don't really care for debating what should & should not be in them. I would suggest something akin to an appeal to the people but at the same time engagement is low at times in policy debates so I fear that if that was the case a minority made because of people not talking on the forums would just turn into heated debates like old. And at the end, this is not a state that has to provide strong and free forms of government because of not only necessity but also by sic semper tryannis, this is a community on a game.

note: This is wordy and a lot, but I just thought of spilling my words out onto the forum, even if some of it is just common sense.

 

[Robert]

Most of my personal issues stem directly from the aggressors & defenders part of the policy as it actively discourages corruptionRP and intermixing between the two scenes (rebel/slumRP and cityRP). Frankly, and as I said before, given the slum is still apart of the city/district it’s perfectly reasonable to let CPs enter without worry of being PKd to some slummer or rebel. As it stands the policy encourages both sides to remain isolated unless prompted by higher ups, CPs via RLs for sweeps and rebels via quests. Though we can’t force one another to interact in harmony we can at the very least promote it via a policy that gives way to that sort of RP.

I believe you could just get rid of the aggressor/defender system all together and instead replace it with:

“If a citizen makes the conscious decision to equip a weapon, firearm or melee, they can be subject to a PK.”
(Whether or not this includes NPCs or not idk?)
Here you’re applying a flat rule across the board for rebels, instead putting much more emphasis on being a slummer and interacting with the district. I’m of the opinion that most rebels should be slummer kings, equip with low grade pistols and mostly melee, at best putting them on the same level as CPs and not OTA.

---

Another point I’ll bring up while I’m here but the policy is designed in a very overwhelming way. The colors are way over the top and I thought I was reading a colouring book. It’s just text upon text upon text, please take the V3 rules and port over that format.

This I can agree with without issue to be honest and despite my lack of mentioning it outside of my latest response. We do plan on carrying this change out. Currently ongoing internal talks to remove the idea of aggressor and defenders and remove the whole CvR clause and keeping it locked down to the first part of the core policy which is essentially what you said here:

"If a citizen makes the conscious decision to equip a weapon, firearm or melee, they can be subject to a PK."

This to us is what we are now aiming/looking into doing.

Edit:
To add as well, we are going to consider from now onwards the Slums part of the City and treat it as the City, not outside of the City. So any future "in the city" statements will now include Slums as a general rule of thumb.

 

[Kappatalist]

The main problem I feel in the community is that even if it is followed to the letter - people will encourage a riot or a shitshow to try and get their friend UN-PK'd because the loss of certain characters is enough to sink an entire group or vice versa. Not very sustainable and at the same time the drama it can create is unacceptable. It's a crazy polarisation case with the level of threat amplified. To me, it needs to aim down the sights of the average player. Anything beyond that is a slippery slope beyond reason and we've seen that before.

So if the problem is shadow sweeps, then the brute force method the Combine creates is open to debate on being hell on Earth in comparison. Fighting the Combine head on should not be the case for 80% of cases. IT is The Combine, after all. But I do agree with what Kapp is saying up there.

As I've said I think this is partly because Willard opted to go for a very in-depth ruleset and PK policy which can just encourage rules lawyering, and hasn't really had the effect of clarifying things as people can't really memorise the whole thing and leaves little room for staff to act on their own initiative lest they make a decision on something that isn't specified exactly in the rules.


Then of course there's the issues with the Combine factions, what we had in v2 was a constant CvR mentality on both sides which cityRP just can't support because the Combine factions need a level of OOC restraint to really work best with rebels. Of course that doesn't work when it all breaks down to constant S2K fights which is not the norm in HL2RP from my experience. It becomes less about characters, and story, and just who's winning.


There is also another angle which I think could be important to look at, on Willard it is so very hard to actually get back into anything because it's so faction centric. Death matters less when there's a half dozen new groups, stores, or the likes, waiting for your new character to try out. CitizenRP is something that's suffered for years.

It's really like being sent back to the lobby whilst you wait for an application for CMU or CWU to go through, god forbid you want to try and run a store because you won't meet any credit or SC criteria, and any stores open are few and far between particularly ones that are RP hubs.

 

[Eviction Notice]

I don't see what's so hard about making it simple: you die you get PKed. Why is it every time PKs are brought up we play it safe? We've had three community votes at this point that had a majority hardcore. Stop babying the community and playing the same games as V2.

 

[Lab]

Only a small percentage of people are clever or thoughtful enough to debate this kind of thing and make decisions. Community votes are marred in large part by people who don't think about these issues seriously. I mean, do we remember the city 24 v3/v4 vote? Willardian democracy has already failed in the past

 

[Halostrophe]

“If a citizen makes the conscious decision to equip a weapon, firearm or melee, they can be subject to a PK.”
(Whether or not this includes NPCs or not idk?)

My only question here is if it applies to a genuine CP sweep and if they are found with said equipment in their inventory. (By genuine I mean CPs have good reason to do a proper do-over regarding the slums and even though this person may not be the target) Will the fact they consciously chose to possess these weapons and be found with them be valid for a possible capture/amputation once charged?

 

[Inspector Orlok]

My only question here is if it applies to a genuine CP sweep and if they are found with said equipment in their inventory. (By genuine I mean CPs have good reason to do a proper do-over regarding the slums and even though this person may not be the target) Will the fact they consciously chose to possess these weapons and be found with them be valid for a possible capture/amputation once charged?

Yes, as it should be. Civil protection should not be considered some sort of pest to slummers/rebels, they are the policing force of regime and if you actively and consciously subvert their authority by lining your pockets with weapons and contraband, you should be PKd if found and caught. Power needs to return to CPs on an OOC level to make them a more tangible threat to your every day citizen and slummer. Their power should not come from the fact they have a better weapon, but the fact if you so much as undermine them, you can be prosecuted and subsequently PKd.

 

[RedHotGinger]

but the fact if you so much as undermine them, you can be prosecuted and subsequently PKd.

Easy does it there. There's a line between threatening and in-line with presenting the setting and power-tripping. Assuming staff keeps their word, rebels are already going to be downgraded in gear significantly, which is good. Hence CPs don't need to be PK hawks looking to maintain their "dominance" through character elimination.

 

[fhs15]

View attachment 51028
Easy does it there. There's a line between threatening and in-line with presenting the setting and power-tripping. Assuming staff keeps their word, rebels are already going to be downgraded in gear significantly, which is good. Hence CPs don't need to be PK hawks looking to maintain their "dominance" through character elimination.

https://willard.network/forums/threads/v3-combine-penal-code.16010/

That is already a thing it seems, so unless you bringing out guns or murdering people you shouldn't be PKed

 

[Inspector Orlok]

View attachment 51028
Easy does it there. There's a line between threatening and in-line with presenting the setting and power-tripping. Assuming staff keeps their word, rebels are already going to be downgraded in gear significantly, which is good. Hence CPs don't need to be PK hawks looking to maintain their "dominance" through character elimination.

It should be a last resort, if players are joining the faction just to PK then yes, they are not good role-players. But in that same vein, if you are constantly pushing your luck, that 'luck' should run out sooner rather than later.

 

[Rabid]

One thing that I don't see brought up much is that a big part of why PK's sour between factions is that the two factions have different "win conditions" to make an impact.

A Rebel wins even if their plan fails, so long as they escape and survive. They don't need to kill a cop to feel like they're resisting - their character just has to make it out of the situation alive. Their very roleplay is, by nature, resisting the occupation and rewarding. That being said, the server setting needing to remain static for CityRP to functions means the usual methods of violent, fun resistance ends up feeling like a waste of time. Rebels can't just run around PKing Combine characters.

On the other hand, Cops don't really get "wins" if they don't directly impact rebels and disrupt their plans. If rebels manage to escape alive, those units know they're liable to get attacked the next day by the same people. Even worse for them is they are often OOCly restrained for the sake of balance (as they should be). This then circles back to them feeling like the only way they can genuinely 'stop' rebels and disrupt their groups IC is to PK them.

This is also why NLR's, when overused, can make everyone feel like nothing has an impact. Should cops get PK'd when they sweep? An average rebel might say yes, but that fucks the balance. Likewise, an average cop might advocate for blanket rebel PK's in sweeps but that just kills off roleplayers who probably weren't involved.

All of leads to slowly mounting tension and worsening faction relations, like @Kappatalist was saying above - people get discouraged and bitter and everyone ends up hating everyone else.