PK Policy & Rebels

[Kappatalist]

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I think this is a major mistep towards what presumably is wanted from v3 and a failure to learn from the issues v2 had to deal with and which ultimately, if but partly, led to it being closed

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This PK policy, as far as I can tell, protects any rebel not directly involved in a rebel op' from being PK'd - now the only cases I can really see this being applicable is if a BOL/AC character is found during that sweep, or if other rebels are caught in the crossfire because they're wandering around armed and geared up.

And I'm pretty confident in saying that if that's the case we'll end up with the same rebel scene we did throughout v2 where rebels sit in the slums, sewers, or outlands all day with their equipment. It doesn't solve any issues, because inevitably when they are killed there will be drama because it becomes the norm to do this and what is implicitly encouraged by the rules.

Walking around with your gear is a fuck up, a risk you willingly take, and ought to be (fairly) punished, not encouraged. Being placed AC, is a fuck up, and there is just not the room in CityRP to cater to players who want to do these things. There's viable IC alternatives for players who are AC, there's expeditions, events, and player operations to do which will require gear. But we accept these can result in a PK.

Under these rules a rebel who does nothing but accumulate gear and stroll around the slums is at less PK risk than the rebel actively RPing in the city, and infiltrating.

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As for regarding cop PKs, I'm not a cop player, I can't say how they feel about this - but again I feel it's important to say that if the slums are left to become only the rebel area we'll just see a repeat of v2.

This isn't about killing rebels or being harsher on them exactly, I'm a rebel main and have been since the server launched - when v3 launches I'll almost inevitably end up playing a rebel again, too.

But the way rebels have been encouraged to act, later on in v2 especially, is not something I think is going to be good for CityRP. There's plenty of issues to address, I think clearly there's an interest to keep rebels from suffering the shitty things they had to throughout v2 but I don't think this is fixing that directly. If there are worries about an overbearing Combine presence, and yeah, I think shadow sweeps are stupid, too - then it would be better to address that within the Combine factions. It's a problematic fix, to issues that come from outside the PK policy.

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As far as I know things are a bit confusing right now and this might not be the actual case but it's certainly worded so, if not, at least the takeaway from what I'm saying is - I think it would be best to avoid the slums becoming some ungovernable, rebel only, side of the city. And that if we're worried about rebels being curbstomped, there are better places to address this than the PK policy itself

 

[nora]

smoking a corrupt cop who's rping with rebels for no reason is completely valid under this ruleset btw

 

[Robert]

Will respond later, but in short there is a misunderstanding of the policy I see just from the parts I read. SO will clarify when home

 

[Robert]

Overall to add: We are working on rewording parts as yes, it is too vague and while I and a few others understand it, that is not universally true for everyone else. Some parts are unclear on what case = what

 

[joe moter]

PK everyone. Other than my characters.

 

[Cjtn10]

Spoiler: Something something sarcastic

CITY-24
HARDCORE TEAM DEATHMATCH

COMBINE VERSUS REBELS

FIRST TO 150 KILLS WINS
Respawns On For Rebel Players
Combine Respawns Disabled



​

Hint: Killing well liked and prominent characters will result in an offmap supply drop via an admin of your liking spawning in an AR2 supply drop for your team.

 

[Robert]

Okay, read through this page and the survey results so far and found a common point of misunderstanding. Based on what I see, people are conflating the Aggressor vs Defender rule as a global thing rather than seeing there is more nuance than simply blanket policy. Maybe the Policy fails to make this clear, high possibility given the error rate of peoples understanding vs the intent.

The policy for all intents and purposes is meant to make a equal ground by defining X and Y and also play into the way V3 gameplay is designed. just some naturally apply V2 logic to V3 Policy since naturally that is the most recent point of memory when it comes to applying these new policies to, nothing else to compare with.

For context, V3 Gameplay intends:
- CPs to be more organized and more reactive vs proactive but the trigger for reaction is much smaller.
- Rebels to be City based, all their tasks, economics, general features and gameplay is all based in the City direct with nothing really within the Slums.
- Rebels are punished more for non-chalantly wearing gear or going out of their way to cause harm which in turn grants a PK on them via CPs shielded by NLR. Just the same as if a Cop or 2 or even a Scanner was to waltz into the Slum trying to get shot or trigger a response which will be ignored by V3 cops- but in events where it does happen CPs face the PK punishment instead and the roles reversed.
- PKs should be simple and appeals should generally not really exist. No one should be able to lawyer their way out of one so policy should be broad enough that once a PK is decided on, it sticks forever. Cutting down paperwork by enforcing the idea of death = death for good, no appeal.
- Sewers will be made dangerous and it will only increase the further you get into the slums. Since the map also directly and openly connects sewers to slums, threats from below can enter from the slums which should, ontop of the fact most rebel systems are in City, add an additional incentive for Rebels not to stay in slums for long and use it generally as a meetup or storage point.

Now onto the misunderstood parts overall:
The policy itself tries to be broad, some argue too broad and others argue its less broad and instead just too vague. E.g. the defintion of a Aggressor and Defender is never properly explained and per the policy, such changes per the scenario (E.g. attacking someone without provocation obviously is an attacker, but also is then contradicted by the fact Cps can do a authorized base raid and if they get shot at, the shooter is counted as the aggressor, not the CPs. Or another one is where Rebels "Defend" their territory and open fire at CPs even if the CPs did not fire nor target them at all. Technically is aggressing on something not concerning you.)

This is where the vagueness becomes an issue.

Now to clarify:

Q: Can wearing all Rebel gear get me shot?
A: Yes, this falls under the PK by Default criteria as the action to wear gear is counted as "Deliberate action leading to death". Can also fall under aggression just for wearing said gear since you are posturing for a fight at any time.

Q: BOL/AC - can they be PK'd?
A: Dependent on why they are tagged, but assuming the AC tag is for serious criminal offenses or general aggressive actions to harm Civs, Combine or other people in general- or even destroying, sabotaging, stealing, etc can warrant a PK under our Narrative and Roleplay PK rulings. Narrative wise, you have become an Anti-Citizen, you have done something to reach that status and built something around it, thus a death is now a possibility should you be caught, captured and amputated or even shot in a combat zone.

Q: Can a CP enter the slums and not get killed?
A: Simply yes. The rule states that only times where they enter without authorization, put themselves in knowing danger of a potential PK and going alone is grounds for a PK. If they go in there with authorization on the other hand to sweep, run a check on someone, investigate a report or just carry out a task given to them via a Commanding Unit, then that is NLR if they die.

Essentially Rebel play by rule, he is NLR- same with CP. If Either side decide to somehow aggress against each other, then they are PK's. If you get shotcopped in the street as a CP, you are NLR, the rebels are dead meat. If you are a Rebel and you get some random CP coming in from nowhere shooting up the slums or causing problems, you are NLR while CP is PK. Its balancing itself out by making sure no one side has the advantage- just punishments for not following their OOC and IC guidelines.

The key issues of the current policy per survey:
- Easy to misunderstand
- Poorly worded / vague
- Unclear what comes first what comes second, how does the nuance of each point relate
- Can be lawyered too easily due to above

If I missed anything or have your own input for wording the policy, please feel free to let us know in DMs or this forum post and make sure to @ so its not missed.

 

[nora]

Simply yes. The rule states that only times where they enter without authorization, put themselves in knowing danger of a potential PK and going alone is grounds for a PK. If they go in there with authorization on the other hand to sweep, run a check on someone, investigate a report or just carry out a task given to them via a Commanding Unit, then that is NLR if they die.

okay but this still hurts cops who dont want to be hyperloyalist and/or be solely confined to the city. it'll only hurt the aim of making slums part of city rp -- some of the best rp comes from cops entering places they shouldn't be and doing things they shouldn't be.

 

[Genny]

okay but this still hurts cops who dont want to be hyperloyalist and/or be solely confined to the city. it'll only hurt the aim of making slums part of city rp -- some of the best rp comes from cops entering places they shouldn't be and doing things they shouldn't be.

The policy doesn't account for that right now, we'll look into it!! Don't worry : )

 

[Inspector Orlok]

Similar to what Nora said, the slum is apart of the city and should not be treated like some lawless wasteland. It is still a central part of the city, but as opposed to it being filled with rebels rocking gear, it should be filled with lower class citizens who are attempting to survive via unsavoury methods, the policy should reflect this by allowing cops to do corruptionRP without risk of being killed for little to no reason. Leeway needs to be given in cases where genuine attempts at RP are happening.

 

[Robert]

Similar to what Nora said, the slum is apart of the city and should not be treated like some lawless wasteland. It is still a central part of the city, but as opposed to it being filled with rebels rocking gear, it should be filled with lower class citizens who are attempting to survive via unsavoury methods, the policy should reflect this by allowing cops to do corruptionRP without risk of being killed for little to no reason. Leeway needs to be given in cases where genuine attempts at RP are happening.

The key issue I see with trying to make exceptions- while it can be done is we end up with the V2 problem. A large unnecessarily oversized PK policy trying to account for far too much and far too many edge cases an what ifs.

Unless there was a simple way that this can be added in without contradicting, in any capacity whatsoever, the original clause- then naturally it can be added in. But you would basically need to spend a long time rewriting the policy just to do that in itself since we cant always achieve both sides of the goalpost.

Like the reason this is not already added in is because it was already becoming overly complicated to add edge cases such as corrupt cops to such a policy.

This in turn promotes the other alternative idea we have quite a few people pushing for in our feedback run which is "All death should be a PK, end of discussion" type of sentiment to make the policy a few words basically explaining death is death except when bugs, minges, glitches or cheats are involved. Anything else is a PK.

This is not me so much dismissing the idea, but more so pointing out the key issue we face and the factions that exist who get a major support boost by having their point proven about why a PK policy trying too hard to make exceptions to a death is not viable regardless of good intent.

Open to someone suggestion a bit of a clause edit for both us and EO policies (As our policies at this time are shared as a match, just ours is worded differently) but the suggestion provided should at least account for how the policy tries to posture itself.

 

[Bighomer]

I imagine.. the same will happen with what I saw in V2 for a smaller chunk, people instantly wrote PK appeals 24/7 once their characters died.
Which isn't too much of a big deal.

 

[Kappatalist]

The key issue I see with trying to make exceptions- while it can be done is we end up with the V2 problem. A large unnecessarily oversized PK policy trying to account for far too much and far too many edge cases an what ifs.

It's a good point, but something which I think the PK policy (and the ruleset) already suffer from as is. It's a running theme for Willard to have a weird sense of 'legalism' almost - it tries to cover everything that it can, but of course it can't ever do that. But because it tries to, players will always argue the finer points in both policies and rules lawyer themselves out of a ban - or, it's seen as staff overreach and becomes a huge drama.

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In this case, I think you can just do away with the whole idea and stick to NLR for CPs in the slums. Rebels don't (often) need to "defend" the slums from the Combine - it ought to be every bit of the city as the rest of it, just as others said, a backwater not constantly patrolled by the CPs.

Again, if we're worried about Combine factions overstepping and crushing slums RP then we need to look at the factions themselves and not the PK policy - it becomes just a band aid solution when, if there is an issue, it ought to be addressed at the source.

Essentially Rebel play by rule, he is NLR- same with CP. If Either side decide to somehow aggress against each other, then they are PK's. If you get shotcopped in the street as a CP, you are NLR, the rebels are dead meat. If you are a Rebel and you get some random CP coming in from nowhere shooting up the slums or causing problems, you are NLR while CP is PK. Its balancing itself out by making sure no one side has the advantage- just punishments for not following their OOC and IC guidelines.

If CPs are going out of their way to harass the slums and a cop does something like that - then I can see every reason for a PK, but that just goes alongside any other part of the PK policy. Of course like I said, CPs have an OOC responsibility to act sensibly and fairly.

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Civil Protection are NLR'd by default when attacked, if they go far beyond their regular duties as a unit to attack or target somebody or something, then this falls under the regular PK policy.

This puts the emphasis on the action itself - whilst leaving cops who just enter the slums unauthorised as an NLR, so long as they don't do something to actually warrant that PK.

 

[Robert]

It's a good point, but something which I think the PK policy (and the ruleset) already suffer from as is. It's a running theme for Willard to have a weird sense of 'legalism' almost - it tries to cover everything that it can, but of course it can't ever do that. But because it tries to, players will always argue the finer points in both policies and rules lawyer themselves out of a ban - or, it's seen as staff overreach and becomes a huge drama.

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In this case, I think you can just do away with the whole idea and stick to NLR for CPs in the slums. Rebels don't (often) need to "defend" the slums from the Combine - it ought to be every bit of the city as the rest of it, just as others said, a backwater not constantly patrolled by the CPs.

Again, if we're worried about Combine factions overstepping and crushing slums RP then we need to look at the factions themselves and not the PK policy - it becomes just a band aid solution when, if there is an issue, it ought to be addressed at the source.



If CPs are going out of their way to harass the slums and a cop does something like that - then I can see every reason for a PK, but that just goes alongside any other part of the PK policy. Of course like I said, CPs have an OOC responsibility to act sensibly and fairly.

View attachment 51008​

This puts the emphasis on the action itself - whilst leaving cops who just enter the slums unauthorised as an NLR, so long as they don't do something to actually warrant that PK.

This gives me an idea for an rewrite/rewording.

I will cook with the others.

 

[Halostrophe]

speak ur truth my drilla

 

[FungletheBungle]

So while I am proposing another approach I'll try post all my issues with it here.

1. This document is not "Short and Sweet"
Not to belabor the obvious but calling something short and sweet does not make it short and sweet. This is 1.4k words, still admittedly down from the monstrous 2.4k of V2, but still not short nor sweet. It covers multiple types of PK's (Narrative, Faction, Character) but none are given precedence over another. In some cases all would need to be met but then some can't work with others (as mentioned later) it's a total fucking mess.
2. PK by default is redundant
This is a false heading. By it's nature it cannot do as it claims, to "automatically PK" "regardless of requests or lack thereof". This is clear because the very next thing it mentions is the rules that are later layed out. This is more an issue of formatting and description then anything. To put it simply this document is the process that any PK must go through to be "approved" (stupid approach) therefor meaning that NOT ONE SINGLE PK can ever be called "automatic". Wipe the entire section or remake it into a contents header of sorts.
3. Advancing the story conflicts with Deliberate Choice
Not every choice can be claimed to advance a story under this ruleset (I personally believe every action drives the narrative, but seeing as this is a document that will be interpreted by many people who disagree with me I have to bring this up). Does drinking glue and then dying because of it progress the narrative of the server? No? Then a player could argue that it doesn't warrant a PK. But it does fall under deliberate choice. Does killing a low grade researcher for his keycard the fault of the researcher? He made no deliberate choice in the matter, however his death does progress the narrative of the server. He could argue that since he made no deliberate choice it can't be a PK (in this case we must assume they have to know exactly who he is to infiltrate, so NLR is off the table). Now I'm not saying that these rules can't be flexible with each other, but that flexibility is what leads to 20+ post forum threads as people argue over it, which is what we want to avoid.
4. Attacker / Defender falls apart with long narrative chains
If I wanted to start an argument at a university campus i'd ask "Who is the aggressor in Israel vs Palestine." Now this may have an answer (I don't care rn) but the point is conflicts, especially the narrative ones we want often don't work along such black and white lines. What if someone from a rebel group attacks the combine and gets the combine to sweep. Then another group of rebels, or another rebel in his group who had 0 knowledge of the attack nor wanted it to happen gets killed in response to the attack. Is this person / group an attacker or defender, what about the rebel that started it, where is the line drawn? It also calls back to the "advancing the story" problem. The other rebel / group made no deliberate choice, but their death as a result of this makes narrative sense. They chose to recruit / work with a loose gun and it got them killed.
5. "Being Targeted" conflicts with "engaging with narrative"
A lot of these points call back to the previous two points so I'll keep this short. The policy protects you from dying when you have no hand in causing it (even being framed), but narrative PK's permit you being PK'ed for narrative purposes as the story may have been built around you / your position. There is an undefined limit of each of these rules and when they cross over neither are marked to take priority.
6. PK auths? For real?
I want to spend as little time on this as possible because I think most people can see the issue here. This is just moving the 20+ post forum threads from after the PK to before. It also halts the narrative in its tracks. No rash decision making can happen, and it limits this for both faction defining choices and personal ones. As I brought up before, does someone just have to stop killing someone who they think killed their spouse / brother /friend because they need to go and make a PK auth? Do they have to IC go away and cope and seethe about it till they get the go ahead? Or do they make more work for the GM's by opening a ticket. If they can do that in game, why bother with the forum? These questions need to be answered in the document.

I mean this whole part is a mess
>We wish to reduce paperwork
>you MUST open a ticket
>But not for in the moment PK's
>They'll be on the spot accordingly
>But other stuff (undefined) will require some small investigation
>Oh and we'll hold up RP for this, policy here is more important then a smooth experience
7. Wide and open field for Voiding
We're told that we want "minimal or no appeals", but with items such as "Good Faith" (How can you know someone did it in good faith) and "Weak justification" (Who defines it) you allow for a person to argue that because the two, totally subjective, were not met that his PK should be voided. This is such a major hole and conflict in the document that I can't even believe that the whole thing was written and looked at and approved. It says we want "Minimal or no appeals" then lists out a thousand potential situations where someone could argue that an appeal is required under the rules.
8. No standards for what constitutes evidence, once again totally subjective
Read above, no actual standards for evidence, one case may be through word of mouth (GM / Mod likes the guy) OR require discord DM screenshots (We can't believe that would happen and require more proof)


Conclusion

The whole document is flawed from the very principles it is built on. It's a document that claims to want less to no appeals and then instantly launches into hundreds of rules that create a lawyers minefield of arguments as to why appeals would be needed. It also fails to give an order of precedence, where one rules is more important an overrides another, which would be a big step in stopping people arguing over conflicting rules. No amount of editing can fix this though, it's principles are flawed and any attempt to rewrite will either unveil more conflicts or add rules in such a way we spiral back to V2's 2.4K wordcount or beyond.

I'll discuss the alternatives more openly once I have a discussion with the rest of management about how we should be approaching PK's, so I hope people will be interested and open to that when I can elaborate on it.

I still have more issues with it, but I've not even wrapped my head around all the problems in this proposal quite yet so I may post again when I make sure they're logical points to bring up.

 

[Robert]

To breakdown the above:

1. This document is not "Short and Sweet"
Not to belabor the obvious but calling something short and sweet does not make it short and sweet. This is 1.4k words, still admittedly down from the monstrous 2.4k of V2, but still not short nor sweet. It covers multiple types of PK's (Narrative, Faction, Character) but none are given precedence over another. In some cases all would need to be met but then some can't work with others (as mentioned later) it's a total fucking mess.

It is designed to be shorter not "Short and Sweet", it was never sold as Short and sweet, it was sold as Shorter than the mess that V2 policy was since V2 policy was just editing in clauses rather than actually fully rewriting itself when it came time to edit it leading to its oversized version. ENG version is now one of the smallest PK policies- its by no means perfect and is undergoing another rewrite per the survey just posted last night which has more than 75% of the community pushing for "Roleplay & Narrative policy" seeking to retain a sense that PKs are earned via set RP & Story conditions.

PK by default is redundant
This is a false heading. By it's nature it cannot do as it claims, to "automatically PK" "regardless of requests or lack thereof". This is clear because the very next thing it mentions is the rules that are later layed out. This is more an issue of formatting and description then anything. To put it simply this document is the process that any PK must go through to be "approved" (stupid approach) therefor meaning that NOT ONE SINGLE PK can ever be called "automatic". Wipe the entire section or remake it into a contents header of sorts.

Formatting and descriptors are being reworded so wont comment much on this yet since this part in particular is technically being removed in favour of a new "PK Trigger" section to replace the current 3 categories of PKs

3. Advancing the story conflicts with Deliberate Choice
Not every choice can be claimed to advance a story under this ruleset (I personally believe every action drives the narrative, but seeing as this is a document that will be interpreted by many people who disagree with me I have to bring this up). Does drinking glue and then dying because of it progress the narrative of the server? No? Then a player could argue that it doesn't warrant a PK. But it does fall under deliberate choice. Does killing a low grade researcher for his keycard the fault of the researcher? He made no deliberate choice in the matter, however his death does progress the narrative of the server. He could argue that since he made no deliberate choice it can't be a PK (in this case we must assume they have to know exactly who he is to infiltrate, so NLR is off the table). Now I'm not saying that these rules can't be flexible with each other, but that flexibility is what leads to 20+ post forum threads as people argue over it, which is what we want to avoid.

I think stating "Does killing a low grade researcher for his keycard the fault of the researcher? He made no deliberate choice in the matter, however his death does progress the narrative of the server." is a very poor example to make. This would never even be a considerable death and generally shouldn't even be accepted as one. Killing over minor things like this isnt progressing narrative, its finding an excuse to kill someone to fit an arbitrary view of ones version of "Dark and gritty" but its not dark either to kill someone over minor things such as losing a Keycard- since in the end it has made 0 impact other than "Man/woman lost his card and got shot for whatever reason? IDK?" is the general response curated. Feels lame at best, bad faith at worse.

Drinking glue also bad example to make since that is just suicide straight up, deliberate yes- but also just straight suicidal and the choice of the player controlling the character. Thats whatever if people wish to do that. Though as people pointed out in the discord, even allowing people to do this some find to be insane as it could lead to people creating the most annoying deaths possible where they just randomly decide to kill themselves at some key moment and its like "Oh well? I suppose they just wanted to die... anyways back to RP"

There should be some degree of sensibility to deaths that isn't "Just cause I can and in real life one cannot survive doing X or Y thus its logical they die if they got shot over X thing regardless of how minor" since that is not gameplay friendly and not everyone finds that "Fun". Permakills are a key tool for pivotal moments where death can truly make an impact or just matter to the people engaged with that story those players and characters have made and contributed to- doesn't need to be in a blaze of glory, but shouldn't be mundane either and should be known to the player what the risks are.

4. Attacker / Defender falls apart with long narrative chains
If I wanted to start an argument at a university campus i'd ask "Who is the aggressor in Israel vs Palestine." Now this may have an answer (I don't care rn) but the point is conflicts, especially the narrative ones we want often don't work along such black and white lines. What if someone from a rebel group attacks the combine and gets the combine to sweep. Then another group of rebels, or another rebel in his group who had 0 knowledge of the attack nor wanted it to happen gets killed in response to the attack. Is this person / group an attacker or defender, what about the rebel that started it, where is the line drawn? It also calls back to the "advancing the story" problem. The other rebel / group made no deliberate choice, but their death as a result of this makes narrative sense. They chose to recruit / work with a loose gun and it got them killed.

Not much to say here as this has been agreed to change per survey feedback regarding how convoluted this part of the policy makes things seem. So we are replacing it with a more neutral version w/ examples to be provided so players can play without fearing a unknown condition hidden in the text. It will be made much simpler. As for what that looks like, you will see it when its been posted on the current policy. But suffice to say, yes people do agree that Attacking and Defending is a concept that is inherently flawed for a RP server.

5. "Being Targeted" conflicts with "engaging with narrative"
A lot of these points call back to the previous two points so I'll keep this short. The policy protects you from dying when you have no hand in causing it (even being framed), but narrative PK's permit you being PK'ed for narrative purposes as the story may have been built around you / your position. There is an undefined limit of each of these rules and when they cross over neither are marked to take priority.

This part of the policy only protects you if you choose to remain neutral your entire life- aka you have to play as a literal rock, tree or hill in order to meet this part of the cirteria. Not everyone wants to get involved in the stakes of potential death and may want to live out life as a peaceful citizen. Nautrally there is eventually going to be threats they cant avoid and will have to survive based on the choices they make during such times so they are not entirely immune, but it does protect them from cases where someone has decided to out of the blue target them in attempt to get them killed one way or another.

Only exception is when said person enters a situation of their own decision making process leading them to their death. E.g. John asks you to follow him- you dont know much about this man and may seem shady but you trust. You follow him into some slums or alley and find yourself getting jumped. Now you have the option to fight for your life, run to the cops or accept fate to be mugged or killed since you made the choice to follow- that I see as reasonable.

What I don't find reasonable is if this point ever expands into the realm of being allowed to be killed simply for existing and minding ones own business trying to Roleplay casually. Some with a job do tend to play super neutral characters that may listen to the story, but not engage with it. The background char that may one day die, but out of everyone is probably the longest survivor of all time just a no name amongst the crowd.

6. PK auths? For real?
I want to spend as little time on this as possible because I think most people can see the issue here. This is just moving the 20+ post forum threads from after the PK to before. It also halts the narrative in its tracks. No rash decision making can happen, and it limits this for both faction defining choices and personal ones. As I brought up before, does someone just have to stop killing someone who they think killed their spouse / brother /friend because they need to go and make a PK auth? Do they have to IC go away and cope and seethe about it till they get the go ahead? Or do they make more work for the GM's by opening a ticket. If they can do that in game, why bother with the forum? These questions need to be answered in the document.

I mean this whole part is a mess
>We wish to reduce paperwork
>you MUST open a ticket
>But not for in the moment PK's
>They'll be on the spot accordingly
>But other stuff (undefined) will require some small investigation
>Oh and we'll hold up RP for this, policy here is more important then a smooth experience

This part we just updated today since the intent is this:

- If you are in the moment, you must open a ticket as in the end a staff member must confirm the death. This doesn't pause the RP by the way, this only ensures the PK is held off until properly reviewed to avoid any potential outcome of an Appeal. Once the staff member locks it in, the case should be solid enough to be unappealable.

- If you are planning on killing someone in advance for the future, then you need to make a PK auth as in advance kills generally are ones you have been planning and have a good reason for it, making it easier for staff to get to approving/declining a PK prior to ensure any key pivotal deaths are pre-approved prior.

The aim is not holding up RP to wait for Staff, its allowing it to continue but Staff get the final say if a PK is to go through or not. The paperwork issue we have atm stems from appeals. Its easier to handle a request than it is an appeal generally. And the way V3 works is that all staff can see Case files for CPs at least, so any move they make is generally accepted on the basis of those case files existing and being correct.

Subjective but still better than no approval process at all which then requires appeals- trying to block appeals when no due process exists prior means you are inviting hatred, making players and victims feel like they had no recourse and made a player generally feel like their is no closure or reason behind their death.

7. Wide and open field for Voiding
We're told that we want "minimal or no appeals", but with items such as "Good Faith" (How can you know someone did it in good faith) and "Weak justification" (Who defines it) you allow for a person to argue that because the two, totally subjective, were not met that his PK should be voided. This is such a major hole and conflict in the document that I can't even believe that the whole thing was written and looked at and approved. It says we want "Minimal or no appeals" then lists out a thousand potential situations where someone could argue that an appeal is required under the rules.

Good faith rules should always exist when it comes to PKs hands down, that is a hill I will sit and die on at all costs since Good faith is the protector of PKs from any rule breaks, RDM reasoning, minge behavior or acts of OOC targeting. Weak justification can and does exist as we seen in V2 for people trying to get X killed for reasons that make 0 sense to kill someone. Good faith blocks that. Its "subjective" to an extent and up to staff ultimately, but again better than nothing.

8. No standards for what constitutes evidence, once again totally subjective
Read above, no actual standards for evidence, one case may be through word of mouth (GM / Mod likes the guy) OR require discord DM screenshots (We can't believe that would happen and require more proof)

Evidence in the policy mainly refers to CPs performing their duties when it comes to amputations. While some have pointed out the Rules should not make up for the shortfall of factions, it should still at least offer some padding against cases where poor evidence or lack of evidence is used to carry out a PK on a unsuspecting player who falls into the "Did nothing wrong" category. This can and does happen and there was times where there was perfectly valid cases- but also times where a CP or 2 tried justifying a kill on someone who had nothing to do with the evidence referred to and had 0 relation and reason outside of them being picked as the most "convenient option" at the time.

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I do agree in part where Pks should be more harsh and that a Narrative PK in a sense that alot of things can be considered a story driven death. But thats not always used in 'Good faith' as we say. And a lot of times, we seen people abuse and lawyer deaths as much as possible which is still a flaw in this new policy even if less so per feedback.

And again we do agree that some parts of the policy need to be reformatted, reworded and reworked to make it all work much better than V2 did and create a system of fairness and neutrality for all but will take some time to get good enough to pass the scrutiny it is getting at this time.

However, I do draw a line at the Hardcore parts you are hinting towards in your post where Death should be able to occur to anyone and everyone even for the most minute things to fit the theme of HL2RPs dark and oppressive atmosphere where it should feel like a Cop should beat you to near death just for losing something like a level 1 keycard that really poses no key security threat in itself and can be disabled- may face a deduction of social credits and funds, possibly re-education, but a full on beating or outright killing as a PK is 3 steps too many.

 

[Imperator RAD-X]

The policy doesn't account for that right now, we'll look into it!! Don't worry : )

More Xs pls

 

[Imperator RAD-X]

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.

 

[Inspector Orlok]

The key issue I see with trying to make exceptions- while it can be done is we end up with the V2 problem. A large unnecessarily oversized PK policy trying to account for far too much and far too many edge cases an what ifs.

Unless there was a simple way that this can be added in without contradicting, in any capacity whatsoever, the original clause- then naturally it can be added in. But you would basically need to spend a long time rewriting the policy just to do that in itself since we cant always achieve both sides of the goalpost.

Like the reason this is not already added in is because it was already becoming overly complicated to add edge cases such as corrupt cops to such a policy.

This in turn promotes the other alternative idea we have quite a few people pushing for in our feedback run which is "All death should be a PK, end of discussion" type of sentiment to make the policy a few words basically explaining death is death except when bugs, minges, glitches or cheats are involved. Anything else is a PK.

This is not me so much dismissing the idea, but more so pointing out the key issue we face and the factions that exist who get a major support boost by having their point proven about why a PK policy trying too hard to make exceptions to a death is not viable regardless of good intent.

Open to someone suggestion a bit of a clause edit for both us and EO policies (As our policies at this time are shared as a match, just ours is worded differently) but the suggestion provided should at least account for how the policy tries to posture itself.

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.

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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.