Info Why Half-Life 2RP Fails where its Predecessor succeeded.

[soviet]

About ninety per cent of us in this community have played at least one of the Half-Life games and have an understanding of them, some of us are veterans to the entire lore and find Half-Life 2 RP to be a shelter for the continuation of their fantasies and enjoyment of the franchise. However, there are major flaws and problems with HL2RP that leaves an empty hole for most of the players, something that we've battled with since the beginning of the schema, the best bit of the Half-Life games that nobody can grasp. I want to delve into how the Half-Life games succeed, and how Half-Life 2 RP fails to pick up from the games and twist it into a roleplay situation for players.

Half-Life 2 is commonly praised for its success in many categories, the combat at the time was flawless and gave endless amounts of enjoyment to those that were waiting for a successor to the original Half-Life game, the Lore was endless and bountiful, leaving the average gamer completely speechless and spanned a hunt for clues for a decade and a half which made milestones in gaming by itself, the praise was beautiful, the game saw itself an additional DLC, Half-Life 2: Episode One. Again, this game was received well and was seen more as its standalone game than it was as an extension to the original Half-Life, just like its successor, Episode Two. The success of Half-Life brought forth multiple communities and fanfictions that allowed fans to continue what they hoped the Lore would've covered if the additional third episode was ever released. One of these communities, or group thereof, was the Half-Life 2 Roleplay Community.

Half-Life 2 succeeded in many categories that a Roleplay community just could not follow through with. The major striving aspect of the games was the combat, something that a Multiplayer roleplaying community built on a relatively old engine with a ridiculously high tick-rate for players over 64 on the original Clockwork system just couldn't handle. This unticked one of the boxes for HL2RP to try and fulfil, but in its stead, it left some rather huge shoes to fill, with the lack of interesting and engaging combat that a Roleplay community could provide, alternatives to that situation had to immediately rise to the occasion to keep the communities interested. Clockwork was the basis of this fulfilling of a humongous hole, which is where the holes in the limelight began to seep through.

Lore was the driving point of the Clockwork communities, and the shoes to fill were humongous. Each and every individual in the Half-Life community has different opinions on how they'd like the story to go, and due to the combat being lacklustre in a Roleplay community, Lore was an adaptive substance that was passed around like gold. Each and every community had a different route on which they'd take the Half-Life storyline, leaving generally giant gaps in between communities where differences would be rather evident. Half-Life Roleplay suffers from a ridiculous amount of problems, stemming from directive to lack thereof, the conversion of many communities into that of a mini MMO, it became less of a Roleplay Gamemode where users could sit and envision the life of a citizen under combine rule, and more into one driven by the figureheads at the current time, with all other smaller communities shadowed by that and forced to fight against the norm of the bigger communities or simply just quit altogether.

After a period of time, Clockwork began to have competition between the communities for the top dog spot, leading to different tactics in Lore and complete reforms of the story whatsoever to achieve the player base's favour in the situation, although this went on for a long time, the ultimate communities had already cemented their place. This, for clockwork in the early days, was LemonPunch.

Half-Life 2 RP became less about telling a story and more about longevity, Attempting to keep players in the game for as long as possible, turning it more into an MMO-esque game and less of the original formula that kept players coming on, to begin with. However, it was very slightly eased into the system over time which made it feel less like an immediate switcheroo and more of a 'change to the norm'. This, however, had everlasting effects. The idea of keeping players staying instead of giving an engaging and enjoying Roleplay experience is what plagued many of the smaller communities as they became more of a business and little remained of a 'community' at that point. We know the big names for these communities, but I won't name them specifically here. This problem still plagues communities today and its a fear that I have about Willard, that we'll become less of a Roleplay community and more into a generic business server.

Half-Life 2 Always kept the players within arms grasp of attaining that bit of information they needed to put the pieces together in the puzzle and make all of the lore click and make sense, leaving us aching for the next game and being the origin point for the entire schema, to begin with. However, many communities seem to fail in understanding what makes the Lore of Half-Life 2 so brilliant and engaging, which is why their servers are seen to flop due to lack of creative directive or perhaps due to more ulterior reasons such as infighting. Events need to be conclusive, yet inconclusive at the same time, if you're to hook a player into a story then you must keep them aching for more. No interest? Then they won't join, you must be absolutely invested in your creation for others to feel the same, and yet you must have the absolute directive of where you want to take it. This is where Anthology succeeded, in its captivating events that kept players coming back, especially when none of them even connect, they knew that it would always be a different and exciting experience. Lore must be absolutely finalized in your head, but fed in puzzle pieces to the player. The longevity of your lore isn't a necessity, but if you plan to have an ongoing arch then you want to have the effects felt on the Gameworld and the players.

This isn't a go at anybody in particular, but more to open a discussion to everyone. This is how I feel about the games. Please excuse if nothing makes sense, I've been awake nearly 32 hours and am writing this trying to keep myself awake. My aim with this thread is to hopefully light peoples eyes up a little bit into some of the problems of the past, and hopefully, Willard won't go near any of these common problems and stay true to its path of following its own idea's and keep original. Eventually, we'll get the perfect formula, whether it's now or later. But let's take away the boring agony of a MMO and put the engagement and Roleplay into the game once again.

Thanks for listening I'm going to go to bed now, I will regret writing this tomorrow.
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[Equinox]

While I agree with all of this, I would ask for examples of what makes a community "MMO" oriented. It's hard to conclude what we are supposed to take away from this on a practical level without any such examples. I understand that lore is important, and story should follow that illusive, weird vibe that Half Life has, but perhaps elaborate on what exactly we need to avoid?

 

[FieldersNL]

Willard won't go near any of these common problems and stay true to its path of following its own idea's and keep original. Eventually, we'll get the perfect formula, whether it's now or later. But let's take away the boring agony of a MMO and put the engagement and Roleplay into the game once again.

This is exactly why I joined WI and decided to work alongside the staff management. I'm very glad where WI is going now. It has gotten more unique over your average HL2RP community and we should stick on the same road we're heading to.

I'm talking about the freedom policy, the structure of the community and the quality we're building. While I played only two HL2RP communities, I've noticed how awfully restricted the servers are. I remember once at the time when HL2RP was a battle lackluster and driven towards more of a MMO style was because how most things were restricted, players trying to create unique experiences for others, just to get the 'no' card. I hope with our freedom policy applying both for players and staff, that we're able to avoid this while not going WAY over the top.

It's been a while since I played HL2RP so I can't exactly remember, but I did remember complaints from players relating to my opinion.

 

[soviet]

While I agree with all of this, I would ask for examples of what makes a community "MMO" oriented. It's hard to conclude what we are supposed to take away from this on a practical level without any such examples. I understand that lore is important, and story should follow that elusive, weird vibe that Half-Life has, but perhaps elaborate on what exactly we need to avoid?

this was more ramblings of me being tired than anything else, but I know where I was going with it.

the whole plaguing MMO idea ties in with the idea of longevity, such as scripts taking precedent over roleplay, people instead of focusing on building themselves an economy of tokens and items and trying to become the better player out of everyone else. whether this is as a cop or as a rebel, it turns into a mmo where people who have all the items and tokens are seen as some sort of demigod and to be honest, (a bit of a jew). they'll do nothing but sit with these items because they're a carebear and the whole idea of rebelling flies right out the window. longevity is a good thing but you should do it with caring interest for your players.

if you would like an example, all I can say is please, please do not allow items to take point in our server, please make the server focus more on having engaging scenarios and to not turn into a shooting gallery, that's all I can say at the minute.

I'm glad this was well received I can't really remember writing this lol

 

[Deleted user]

what makes a community "MMO" oriented

Muh boi
Have you seen what we have?

 

[KaythPlus]

At the end of the day, I don't really see the issue. There are plenty of smaller private servers that pop up and do story-line based roleplay in the universe. It simply isn't what the bigger servers are built for.

Sure in some communties, there are bad events, but there are also very good enjoyable events. And players are a big part of these stories, most of my memories from HL2RP come from interactions with players that really took creativity and ran with it.

You create your own roleplay.

 

[Equinox]

You create your own roleplay.

This is only true to an extent on a City RP server. If every member was very good at roleplay, and they were inclined to do so, then sure we could say that we can create our own roleplay. But the fact remains that telling people to "create their own RP" simply doesn't work. It's often seen when most servers are faced with issues involving their Citizen faction being dead or stagnating. You can't just tell people to "create their own RP" because they either don't know how to, don't want to go through the effort, or simply lack the means to do so. This isn't just true in HL2RP, but any RP community. You often find tons of people who want to RP, but never actually go out and answer another person's call. They want it to come to them.

This is why GMs are a thing though. They exist to create RP, and force players into one another when they are just walking around, giving them something to do.

 

[Mendelevius]

At the end of the day, I don't really see the issue. There are plenty of smaller private servers that pop up and do story-line based roleplay in the universe. It simply isn't what the bigger servers are built for.

Sure in some communties, there are bad events, but there are also very good enjoyable events. And players are a big part of these stories, most of my memories from HL2RP come from interactions with players that really took creativity and ran with it.

You create your own roleplay.

You are always free to create your own roleplay. That's nothing new when it comes to Willard. The issue with that statement is that creating your own roleplay in a server rarely ever comes to fruition because most players are there doing their own thing, so they ignore everyone else. Most players want an endgame experience very quickly, and since staying In Character leads to boredom. Out Of Character antics come out. Thats where a lot of minging became a thing because you could get that endgame experience within seconds of joining a server.

Sure it wasn't the way it was meant to be played, but it was a lot better than devoting hours of your time just to be PK'd. That is why we are using Game Masters. This way roleplay will be able to be created, or assisted through help, preferably unnoticed. Make players meet up with similar goals. Make multiple stories merge into bigger stories. This is what Game Masters are all about. The player, regardless of the faction.

A lot of players have patience, but others do not so a GM will need to quickly be able to read a player when assisting them. This may not be as easy as it sounds at launch, so I expect it to take time.

 

[verTix]

Half-Life's combat has never been great. In reality, it's about as average as it can get.

HL1 was hitscan, point-and-click, rush with shotgun, then quick switch to SMG. It boiled down to literally just holding M1 on the enemy as they do the same to you, until one of you dies.

HL2 (and its episodes) was hitscan, point-and-click, rush with shotgun, then quick switch to SMG/AR2. Maybe whipping out the crossbow every now and again. It boiled down to literally just holding M1 on the enemy as they do the same to you, until one of you dies.

There's no bullet travel, penetration, or anything like that. It's incredibly basic.

HL:A is more modernized, but the enemies are extremely dumbed down in order to provide the player with a "fair" experience in VR. OTA literally just stand there in the open as you shoot them, and very rarely find cover.

The Half-Life series is praised for the pacing of its narrative and the power of its storytelling. The graphics at the time (at least for HL2) were also quite good. The combat isn't something to praise. It's average, if not subpar.

 

[KaythPlus]

You are always free to create your own roleplay. That's nothing new when it comes to Willard. The issue with that statement is that creating your own roleplay in a server rarely ever comes to fruition because most players are there doing their own thing, so they ignore everyone else. Most players want an endgame experience very quickly, and since staying In Character leads to boredom. Out Of Character antics come out. Thats where a lot of minging became a thing because you could get that endgame experience within seconds of joining a server.

Sure it wasn't the way it was meant to be played, but it was a lot better than devoting hours of your time just to be PK'd. That is why we are using Game Masters. This way roleplay will be able to be created, or assisted through help, preferably unnoticed. Make players meet up with similar goals. Make multiple stories merge into bigger stories. This is what Game Masters are all about. The player, regardless of the faction.

A lot of players have patience, but others do not so a GM will need to quickly be able to read a player when assisting them. This may not be as easy as it sounds at launch, so I expect it to take time.

Staying in character leads to boredom? What? We're on a roleplay server for god's sake where the purpose of even flagging on is to roleplay. If people are becoming bored then that honestly seems like an issue they're having.

I have nothing against using a team of event coordinators to create roleplay across the server — it's not a new concept, nor is it a bad concept. Assuming they stay incognito and don't bother people doing their own passive then it can only lead to a positive outcome. I agree with that wholeheartedly and I think you've a good idea laid out there. But these coordinators typically suffer burn-out eventually, and I really hope that doesn't become the case here.

I'm excited for the server — my stance isn't against anything you are doing. My stance was just that players are the main drive of roleplay. If your players cannot be bothered then spoonfeeding them roleplay won't help — cause as soon as it stops they'll fall off.

What you've got planned is a good balance. Those who want to passive and character build in the server should freely do so without intervention, but the best way to bring those in who aren't in social circles or 'circlejerks' is to give them some common thing or task that forces them to interact.

 

[Mendelevius]

Staying in character leads to boredom? What? We're on a roleplay server for god's sake where the purpose of even flagging on is to roleplay. If people are becoming bored then that honestly seems like an issue they're having.

I have nothing against using a team of event coordinators to create roleplay across the server — it's not a new concept, nor is it a bad concept. Assuming they stay incognito and don't bother people doing their own passive then it can only lead to a positive outcome. I agree with that wholeheartedly and I think you've a good idea laid out there. But these coordinators typically suffer burn-out eventually, and I really hope that doesn't become the case here.

I'm excited for the server — my stance isn't against anything you are doing. My stance was just that players are the main drive of roleplay. If your players cannot be bothered then spoonfeeding them roleplay won't help — cause as soon as it stops they'll fall off.

What you've got planned is a good balance. Those who want to passive and character build in the server should freely do so without intervention, but the best way to bring those in who aren't in social circles or 'circlejerks' is to give them some common thing or task that forces them to interact.

Yes! Players get bored rather quickly. Most players join a community rather optimistic, but get discouraged when it's the same old things, Judgement waiver, zombie attack, rations. Like your self, optimism comes from the dream of experiencing your own story, and we want to give that to you, and everyone else.

GM's getting burned out will happen and is an issue we take seriously, which is why we have so many. Is over saturation the answer to that problem, no. The answer is autonomy, which we have given GM's, which means they can choose to take a break and focus on their own characters at any time. Getting burnt out is a common problem for every level of staff. The common excuse for an admin losing his cool is often based on being burnt out in some way.

So by doing it this way, staff can pick and choose when to play and when to GM, or perhaps both in some way. The last thing we want is stress from being staff here, weighing on the player in some way. Whether that be from being ignored or treated unfairly.

 

[Deleted user]

GM's getting burned out will happen and is an issue we take seriously, which is why we have so many.

Careful with that.

 

[Madcombat]

I played roleplay servers since Gmod 9, I've been at it pretty much for twenty years now. I've entertained myself with Dungeons and Dragons, Garrysmod, Never Winter Nights, discord based roleplay and so on.

The prime issue with serious roleplay in garrys mod in my opinion and I hold quite a strong opinion with others is the lack of respect for other characters. (No, that doesnt mean letting characters do what they want.) What it means is recognising some characters have inherent attributes to them that other people do not. For example, some men are muscle heads, some men run fast, some men are more intelligent. Many roleplayers in garrysmod specifically have trouble recognising positive pro's to a character and what a character is capable of achieving. Atop of that- people have gotten quite elitist in the "Play 2 lose" system that predicates most of serious roleplay servers. For a long time I was one of those people that lived and died by that system.

But after so many years, growing up and just getting older. I realized most of my adventures in roleplay were successful and I began to explore why they were successful. Was I successful because my character should've been capable of success, was he stronger in those situations? Was he more logical then others? My loss of love for Garrysmod roleplay came when I realized that I won not because of how strong my character was, but because I could argue well my point with a player and convince them I was right. Once I was able to do that- I came to the realization that all roleplay on garrysmod is not based on the result of your characters inherent ability but your ooc ability to type words onto a screen and convince your opponent.

So in conclusion- there's bad under lining foundations to roleplay that inherently draws people to be toxic to each other because they -have- to in order to succeed.

So what's the alternatives? Rolling a 1d100 and who ever wins highest succeeds? That's terrible as a solution! That predicates entirely on luck and nothing else.

The solution I found was that in order to solve these inherent problems was to make character sheets for characters that outlined a characters capabilities, that's what I started to experiment with and I found huge success in enjoyment when putting such things into play. People who came to my projects were sketched out but after afew weeks, they leaned into such systems and most of them couldn't even tell why. I could finally make actions and events more meaningful, physically show people their characters were growing AS characters rather then OOC avatars.

I think that's the place people need to start experimenting into, there's nothing wrong with abit of complexity. The issue is- people are afraid to take risks when it comes to running their communities and many outright just don't have a vision for what they want to produce at all. Yeah- I said it, vision.

Vision is the start of everything, if a team has no vision then their project is doomed. You don't need coders and you don't need scripters. You don't even need super cool addons. All you need is a solid vision to work a framework from and then push it outwards into your community setting up interesting and fun new gameplay innovations. If you can't do something that basic, you're p-much just a leech and part of the problem.

Let's take this place for example; let's look at the Turn Based Combat. Is it perfect? No- is it innovative as a idea? Yeah, very much so. It's a direction away from the S2K mentality for large fights that're predicated on OOC skill. Whilst it may not be entirely roleplay friendly, it's a step in the right direction and that direction is turned based and based on simple rules like "How far should you be able to move in 3 seconds" and "How many shots should you be able to pull off?" Those are very foundational questions to what people need to start talking about when it comes to gameplay systems when it comes to roleplay.

 

[Equinox]

I played roleplay servers since Gmod 9, I've been at it pretty much for twenty years now. I've entertained myself with Dungeons and Dragons, Garrysmod, Never Winter Nights, discord based roleplay and so on.

The prime issue with serious roleplay in garrys mod in my opinion and I hold quite a strong opinion with others is the lack of respect for other characters. (No, that doesnt mean letting characters do what they want.) What it means is recognising some characters have inherent attributes to them that other people do not. For example, some men are muscle heads, some men run fast, some men are more intelligent. Many roleplayers in garrysmod specifically have trouble recognising positive pro's to a character and what a character is capable of achieving. Atop of that- people have gotten quite elitist in the "Play 2 lose" system that predicates most of serious roleplay servers. For a long time I was one of those people that lived and died by that system.

But after so many years, growing up and just getting older. I realized most of my adventures in roleplay were successful and I began to explore why they were successful. Was I successful because my character should've been capable of success, was his stronger in those situations? Was he more logical then others? My loss of love for Garrysmod roleplay came when I realized that I won not because of how strong my character was, but because I could argue well my point with a player and convince them I was right. Once I was able to do that- I came to the realization that all roleplay on garrysmod is not based on the result of your characters inherent ability but your ooc ability to type words onto a screen and convince your opponent.

So in conclusion- there's bad under lining foundations to roleplay that inherently draws people to be toxic to each other because they -have- to in order to succeed.

So what's the alternatives? Rolling a 1d100 and who ever wins highest succeeds? That's terrible as a solution! That predicates entirely on luck and nothing else.

The solution I found was that in order to solve these inherent problems was to make character sheets for characters that outlined a characters capabilities, that's what I started to experiment with and I found huge success in enjoyment when putting such things into play. People who came to my projects were sketched out but after afew weeks, they leaned into such systems and most of them couldn't even tell why. I could finally make actions and events more meaningful, physically show people their characters were growing AS characters rather then OOC avatars.

I think that's the place people need to start experimenting into, there's nothing wrong with abit of complexity. The issue is- people are afraid to take risks when it comes to running their communities and many outright just don't have a vision for what they want to produce at all. Yeah- I said it, vision.

Vision is the start of everything, if a team has no vision then their project is doomed. You don't need coders and you don't need scripters. You don't even need super cool addons. All you need is a solid vision to work a framework from and then push it outwards into your community setting up interesting and fun new gameplay innovations. If you can't do something that basic, you're p-much just a leech and part of the problem.

Let's take this place for example; let's look at the Turn Based Combat. Is it perfect? No- is it innovative as a idea? Yeah, very much so. It's a direction away from the S2K mentality for large fights that're predicated on OOC skill. Whilst it may not be entirely roleplay friendly, it's a step in the right direction and that direction is turned based and based on simple rules like "How far should you be able to move in 3 seconds" and "How many shots should you be able to pull off?" Those are very foundational questions to what people need to start talking about when it comes to gameplay systems when it comes to roleplay.

Excellent post.