[MRP] Likes and Dislikes Topic #1

[Lex_ 506]

I'm not responding to everything you said, even if I quote the entirety of a paragraph. I both lost interest in reading your book of a response and had trouble following it because you used too many big words too quickly. Should obviously know my child brain can't handle that.

49 minutes ago, shrimp said:

Let's get into it then. I first arrived at this conclusion a long, long time ago. We're talking years. At that point in time, it was biased in the sense that this was the type of experience that I as an individual preferred due to my various love affairs with games like SS13 and whatnot. Over time I pushed and lobbied for a variety of things that were both conducive to the RP experience or things that outright destroyed it due to my responsibilities at the time as a faction leader or otherwise and the ulterior motives therein. As the years went on and my affiliations changed and I got to take either in active role in handling these aspects of the server (Creating RU, GM stuff, etc.) or a back seat role (being completely absent), I've been able to see a variety of perspectives on the topic, but additionally, and far more importantly, I've been able to see how other communities operate from a very entrenched position. 

Understand that it's a backstory and explanation to how you gained your opinion and knowledge, but to be honest, I don't really care. It isn't important to the now, as you've already said that communities and people change and adapt over time.

49 minutes ago, shrimp said:

As I also stated, I believe that player quality is directly proportional to player quantity. As a result of having a larger sample size of players, the number of players that display positive characteristics (leadership capacity, maturity, productivity) increases. When these traits are emphasized and rewarded, the portion of the active player base that can be deemed of good quality increases, and the community itself benefits. It should also go without saying that players that don't inherently display positive traits will be encourage to develop them in an environment where said traits are rewarded, in order to benefit.

First two sentences here are rather basic math. I do agree about how we could be increased the quality of our community members but this all relies on what direction we intend to move towards together. Now, before you quote repeating about how it's important to grow rather than base ourselves around a loud majority's opinion, either tipped side, I'd also agree. But the goal is stability over dropping what we have currently built up. This is one of the most major things I disagreed with in your ideology: about how we should just drop a portion of the community because they won't conform to the 'old head' minority.

49 minutes ago, shrimp said:

With combat at the helm, the player experience naturally suffers at the hand of the limitations of the engine. This is happening in the current model as well but not quite as severely because players still have the faction element to look towards when attempting to derive satisfaction from anything other than combat. So, when you have to sacrifice all these elements to have a "fun and relaxed" shooter, you lose the only things that make the server worth playing against everything else out there.

 

It was very strange to even try and do, as the typical player had very little experience in this sort of situation, and the hard structure of the server was not and never has been built to accommodate intuitive RP. RP, as I'm sure you all have noticed in recent times, isn't very entertaining when it's reliant on the player and their imagination. Most of the current and past populations have had very little experience in anything related to RP, so when the RP aspect of the server isn't built for it, it feels wrong and forced. 

What the roleplay focused path means is to just add content and unique features to the server. A lot of content. Content that makes roleplaying feel natural and essential to the gameplay, and not a chore. It may seem hard for a lot of you to believe but it can be done, and it's done often. The servers that do roleplay well do well in general. 

Weird how you make no mention that the combat focused path requires the same actions as the roleplay focused path with differences being in the type of content and features available. You just jump straight to what looks like 'the engine makes everything shitty' in tone. If the current community showed up to MRP with no intention to roleplay OR because a friend said the 'combat was fun', then that is one thing that makes Garnet a better server for them in comparison to what else is available on Gmod.

If the structure was set-up in a way that didn't support the type of roleplay that you've attempted and are attempting to implement, then why even bother doing so in the first place? It's the same argument as to why we shouldn't just drop the DarkRP gamemode and make our own because the dev time and costs outweigh the short-term benefit, when both routes provide sustainability in the long-term. "The servers that do roleplay well do well in general." The servers that gain popularity through community and engaging gameplay, regardless of roleplay or combat, do well.

 

49 minutes ago, shrimp said:

Based on experience and my own personal feelings, GMs are non-essential to a good RP server, as functions and features of the server itself allow for RP to simply happen without relying on the player or an appointed individual. Making somebody do regularly scheduled events is a really quick way to burn them out. I've only seen one really successful server have GMs, and the server wasn't even close to dependent on their job.

You created the recent generation of GMs, technically. If it is non-essential and doesn't benefit the server in the intended way, why argue to keep them around? I understand you said before that it was an attempt to ease the community into roleplay, but it clearly didn't work and you talked so much about how this community doesn't want to change in the first place, so why even try?

49 minutes ago, shrimp said:

Having dealt with the potential player population that prefers high quality servers with good RP and custom content, I can assure you that, well, they not only find it appealing, but tend to put up a lot of money for it. 

If you've enjoyed other 'high quality' servers that fits what you like to play, then go play it. You found your new community and likely made new friends. Don't come back here and try to push your little niche roleplay bullshit onto people who are vocally against it. The funny thing is is that most people I talk to are interested in a hybrid of PVP and roleplay, but you're attempting to force them into something they don't think they'd enjoy. Either way, I don't think you've really experienced enough of all paths to be set on 'roleplay is the best' considering Gmod hasn't seen a proper PVP/RP hybrid built around what makes GG unique (I don't claim to either, please don't mistake that). Now, I'd be interested in seeing what a roleplay-focused server would look like, but I'm not the entirety of the community and nor do I claim to be. While I like discussion, I'm not participating in this anymore. I'm rather tired of reading an essay on how some old veteran player wants to change the server because you enjoyed a different community.

Edited October 25, 2020 by Fier
had to add a disclaimer before people bitch

[shrimp 764]

2 hours ago, Fier said:

too many big words too quickly

Research papers have ruined my ability to talk about something like a normal human.

2 hours ago, Fier said:

it's a backstory and explanation

While my personal experiences aren't the most relevant information, I've commonly been met with arguments referencing some of my past initiative by people with particularly good memory, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to get ahead of those responses by acknowledging where I'm coming from in this discussion.

2 hours ago, Fier said:

the goal is stability over dropping what we have currently built up

So lets start here. I think it's important to understand the reason that either of us are here writing these posts to begin with, and that is the steady decline of the server over the years. As a result, we're now in a situation where threads questioning the state of the server are somewhat commonplace and appear often. The server itself is still very much there, but suffering an identity crisis. Threads like this one should be the indicator that tells us that there is no longer much to lose by taking a different route. The server has been unstable for a very long time, and requires a lot of external attention to even operate at a functional level (see: In July when it very nearly collapsed). My question is, why would we continue to do and suggest the same things we've been doing for literal years and expect different results? (Einstein defines this as insanity). And why wouldn't we want to create a hard structure where the experience creates itself, if stability is the goal?

3 hours ago, Fier said:

one thing that makes Garnet a better server for them in comparison to what else is available on Gmod.

Right, which is why I tried to make it very clear in my original post that the total number of people who join the server for those specified reasons is limited, and that's the population we've been exhausting for years, and it's now that we're starting to experience the effects of that in a way that cannot be ignored.

3 hours ago, Fier said:

If the structure was set-up in a way that didn't support the type of roleplay that you've attempted and are attempting to implement, then why even bother doing so in the first place?

I like a good challenge, more on this when I address the GM stuff.

3 hours ago, Fier said:

dev time and costs outweigh the short-term benefit

When it comes to features that enhance gameplay, roleplay related or not, certain functions are necessary to create loops in progression to increase player retention. Features that give every player a more rewarding experience proportional to the amount of time they put in, as opposed to burning them out quickly. Depth is an important factor when creating a server, and is what keeps a player interested. In MRP's case, the player operated functions of the server, which is primarily the factions, has gradually grown more shallow over the years for a variety of reasons, increasing the rate in which players join and eventually leave the server, chewing through that finite population I previously mentioned faster and faster. 

The simple answer for creating depth and a cyclic feature of gameplay has always been "roleplay" in the broadest context. However when it comes to custom features, Garnet and I were working on some pretty complex systems to push the server in a certain direction prior to my departure in the spring (see: The Logistics Update). With these types of systems, it wouldn't be forced upon the player to come up with things to do, but the server would naturally provide a constant flow of tasks and rewards for doing them (rewards that actually matter).

3 hours ago, Fier said:

the recent generation of GMs

 

3 hours ago, Fier said:

If you've enjoyed other 'high quality' servers that fits what you like to play, then go play it.

 

3 hours ago, Fier said:

I'm rather tired of reading an essay on how some old veteran player wants to change the server because you enjoyed a different community.

I'm just gonna hit all of this at once. I became the GM Director way back when and put in an unprecedented amount of work trying to make it the best it could be with the tools I was given to do so, solely at the request of Garnet. While I didn't believe it was possible, I didn't know if it was impossible either, so I accepted the challenge and gave it a shot. The GM department and event server were simply the first step in a series of initiatives Garnet and I were mulling over at the time to push the server in a more sustainable and unique direction, but we had some personal disagreements and it never panned out. That being said, I still consider Garnet to be a longtime friend, despite our numerous falling-outs and differences. Every now and then I'll get a text about some idea or proposition and get asked for my input because it's subjects I've spent a lot of time looking into. I'm not here typing "essays" because I'm looking for a reason to come back, but because I've probably put more time into this server than anybody other than Garnet himself, and I would really hate to see it fail. 

 

[Nutter 15,177]

1 minute ago, shrimp said:

Research papers have ruined my ability to talk about something like a normal human.

out of everything you wrote, this resonated with me the most

[shrimp 764]

Just now, Garnet said:

out of everything you wrote, this resonated with me the most

dont text me and not reply smh

[Jared Cox 651]

On 10/23/2020 at 3:28 PM, Garnet said:

people have become too reliant on the "WAR TIMER". I would genuinely enjoy the use of COMMS in RP to create hostile scenarios by which players will fight over an objective, as opposed to idle through a timer. If you have a tryout going on but a "WAR TIMER" is coming up, that is no longer an issue, as you can now mitigate hostility and resume until both parties are ready.

i would also like to mention that not having the war timer made wars themselves more exciting to anxiously wait for because you never knew when the wars would actually start. i thought it was much cooler back then when you didn't know exactly when a huge war would break out. instead with a war timer telling you an exact timeframe, it takes you out a little bit over everything else that's going on with the server because, as you mentioned, you have to worry about the timer and come up with a plan as to what you're going to do in an hour before the war. (i don't remember exactly if someone did manually keep track of a war timer back then or if we just randomly decided to start a war if we felt that there hadn't been one in a good while so correct me if im wrong.)

[Gildarts 169]

15 hours ago, shrimp said:

Hello everyone. I’ll spare the introduction because you all know who I am. Just to quickly address the opposing argument of my opinion being uninformed, it takes me about twenty minutes to get briefed on the state of everything, and not much has changed in the past months.

That being said, I’ve been spending a lot of time in my absence taking a tour of other places in our little neck of the woods we call Garry’s Mod and certainly been doing my homework. It’s my understanding that Gildarts wants to get a, while imperfect, grasp of the player demographics here in our own backyard. While this is something that should’ve been done a long time ago, it’s not something worth doing any longer. When it comes to the playerbase (not quality, simply quantity), you have to be able to look at it from three perspectives. The goal of server development should always be to appeal to the playerbase, but that term is always looked at through the lens of the current player population. The current players are always going to be the most vocal and responsive to attention from the server themselves, but two other populations exist and have always existed; Potential players, and past players. Past players include everyone who has participated in the server, and subsequently exhausted their interest, while potential players include all the people who have yet to join the server or commit time.

The method Gildarts used to acquire player demographics is not really ideal because it only draws data from the current population. However, the data does give us some really important statistical information. The trend in the data shows a prominent bell curve peaking at the ages of 16-18. This makes sense because many players typically drop off around this age due to life circumstances, mirroring the drop off in the data. This decay factor is the most important concept in maintaining the overall population. In my experience, Gildarts is of the belief that the current population is all we’ve got, because gMod is a dying game. Fact of the matter is, gMod is still one of the most populated games on Steam, and in the last few months I’ve had brief conversations with Garnet about certain to-remain-nameless communities springing up virtually overnight and consistently hitting max player counts despite all the crashes and bugs that come with a new server. I’ve seen several cases of this simply in the past few months, where previously non-existent communities reach an absurd level of interest simply by doing something different. By tapping into the massive population of potential players by appealing to those interests rather than that of a finite, aging community.

The reality is that the current population of MRP is just that; finite and aging. Going back to Gildarts’ poll, the proof is right in front of you. If new players aren’t being brought in to counter and overcome the natural rate of decay of the server, the population is going to diminish in quantity, which means less of a sample size to scour for officers and competent players. The new players are out there, they just have reason not to be here, and that reason stems from the longevity of the server. There was once a time when MRP was the hot new thing, but the concept that attracted the past population has seldom changed since. Statistically, the total number of people that are going to join and continue to play the server based on the long-term model (Timer-based, 3-OBJ, 2 Faction Wars) is limited, because only so many people that fit the criteria of having gMod, being interested by that concept, and having time to commit exist, and eventually less and less of those people will fall between the ideal age margin of 16-18 and the population for that model of server will cease to be seen.

Thus, here we are at a crossroads where the server is constantly questioning the viability of its own existence, and the players within are questioning the cost of continuing their time investment into said server. The crossroads the server has arrived at gives three options, to continue straight ahead, turn left, or turn right. The straight head path forwards the path the server has almost always lied upon, the awkward limbo state between a meandering FPS with mild RP and progression characteristics, failing at neither, but succeeding at neither. A path which has proven to not be sustainable over the years. The left hand path details the elimination of roleplay elements, and refocusing the game entirely as a shooter and attempting to optimize the game for combat. While we have never truly taken this route, it can be said with near certainty that it will not succeed. gMod is a game built upon an ancient engine, not built with mass player to player engagement in mind, and an attempt to compete directly with other high-performance shooters will offer nothing to the potential player population that cannot be found in much higher quality elsewhere. It would be physically impossible, and quite foolish, to try and go up against the CS:GO’s and Battlefield’s of the world on a platform like this when the other titles are already out there, and much more efficient.

To understand the right hand path, you must understand the overall appeal of the platform that is gMod, and that is the unique opportunities for gameplay that it presents. This is the appeal that brought many, if not all of us to MRP in the first place. The fact that it isn’t just a shooter, but something else entirely. Where progression isn’t judged by a level system with coded experience values, but by human operators and interactions. There is a depth to it that cannot be found in your typical Call of Duty, but only in an open-ended platform like gMod that can be improved and expanded upon.

I won’t delve into the specifics of what the right hand path entails, but the point here is to identify the factors that contribute to why it’s not only the correct option, but the only option to succeed in the current climate. Moral of the story, find something to do, and make sure that this server is the best one at it, in and outside of gMod.

Here’s a tl;dr diagram for the illiterate and/or lazy.



 

If you think this is going to be my only post, Wait for phase 2 and 3

[Kendal 450]

5 hours ago, Jared Cox said:

i would also like to mention that not having the war timer made wars themselves more exciting to anxiously wait for because you never knew when the wars would actually start. i thought it was much cooler back then when you didn't know exactly when a huge war would break out. instead with a war timer telling you an exact timeframe, it takes you out a little bit over everything else that's going on with the server because, as you mentioned, you have to worry about the timer and come up with a plan as to what you're going to do in an hour before the war. (i don't remember exactly if someone did manually keep track of a war timer back then or if we just randomly decided to start a war if we felt that there hadn't been one in a good while so correct me if im wrong.)

To add to this a bit, I dont want to delve too deep into this kind of stuff because I JUST came back to the community... BUT I think it'd be pretty awesome to let players decide when they wanna go take some obj's rather than a war timer telling us all when it's time to do so.

It'd give players a lot more time to co-ordinate small rp stuff, as well as plan for war, do more advanced or fun tryouts for their factions. Now that I think about it I feel like the timer dictates a little too much of what we do considering it's just numbers counting down. 

But in all honesty, I know a probable good chunk of the community likes the flow of peacetime-wartime.