Gentlemen, we need to step up our game.

For the two weeks or so, I have seen another consistent 0/20. This is very much unacceptable. I may not be able to join the server until this weekend as I'm swamped in work, but I will not allow this community to fall again. The few memories that I can grasp onto from The Crew are not to be in vain. Guys, we can do better than this. We can bring up the population. Only a few weeks ago were we successful in averaging a 16/20. Every day. The effort that we have put into this community should not be wasted. Too many people have devoted themselves to restoring this place to it's former glory, I one of them.

I understand that some of you have personal problems, such as Holler with his family and Bravo with his galactic conquest campaigns. You guys need your own time and I respect that, but I've been seeing little to no effort to keep the server active besides from Chris and Cactus. I'm not demanding that we get 20/20 every day from now until the end of Garry's Mod and have everyone on 24/7, but for those of you who aren't busy with much else and have some time to kill, join up.

We're a community, a community that has endured glory days and the lowest of the low in terms of population. This place has crawled back up from the dead and restrengthed itself, but now it is falling again. Will we make the same mistakes twice?

It's up to you.

I think we should make some changes to the community that will help bring up activity in The Crew.

1. We should have designated game nights. Invite your friends or whoever you might have to invite, and RP.

2. We should have more updates on the Steam Group, there are quite a few people in the group, so if we make announcements and start using the function that allows inviting everyone to the game we should be able to boost the pop

3. We should advertise outside of the forums and steam, perhaps with a facebook page or twitter *That one's not a GREAT idea but it could help in some degree*
Hope you find this useful.

1. I had wanted to try this. People went back to the "no fk u ths isnt a job" argument that kept us from having regular Civil Protection training in the past. I had an idea for faction nights, ensuring good passive, but I got both the job argument as well as "that's unfair to new people."

2. No point in planning and announcing events when no one's around. No purpose in providing supply to no perceived demand. Simple economics right there. And I have doubts that just saying "come play" is going to do a lot.

3. Fins somewhere that isn't filled to the brim with trolls and 12 year olds and we'll have at it.

General Bravo wrote:1. I had wanted to try this. People went back to the "no fk u ths isnt a job" argument that kept us from having regular Civil Protection training in the past. I had an idea for faction nights, ensuring good passive, but I got both the job argument as well as "that's unfair to new people."

2. No point in planning and announcing events when no one's around. No purpose in providing supply to no perceived demand. Simple economics right there. And I have doubts that just saying "come play" is going to do a lot.

3. Fins somewhere that isn't filled to the brim with trolls and 12 year olds and we'll have at it.

The key to it is a positive attitude!

Instead of searching for excuses, I am just going to say that RP is getting to bland for me and some others.  Before you say I just need to try or some shit, I am going to tell you I have.  When I try to passive on CCA, I am yelled at to patrol and guard.  The only rp I can get out of that is maybe a minge throwing a can, or some lolwebul attack.  When I try to Rp on a citizen, I am yelled at by a CP or told to get inside and be tied.

Even with the rare occasions when I do have amazing rp, they are short lived and the boring cycle starts over again.

What happened to The Crew that didn't have 05's yelling at you, and that let you talk to others?

What happened to the amazing slums rp that I dearly loved so much?

What happened?

Bullseye.


The very reason I'm not on TC as much is because of RP loss. The good RP just seems... gone. I know that some people remember City 8 and the RP that went on there. It was REALLY good, the unit-to-citizen RP. City 45 had the best slumsRP as I can remember. With C18, well, now things just seem out of proportion. I'm not saying we should switch the maps, but when we started back up again, there was a change in the RP.

Honestly, the real problem here is people just aren't willing to engage in actual roleplay, the very thing they come on the server for in the first place. They just OOCly screw around 80% of the time. I'm even guilty of doing this myself. I feel that we need to work on the small group passiveRP. That's what makes HL2RP special, at least for me. 2-5 people in a group get together and develop their characters together. Then things happen. One member of group will form friendships with other members. The other members do the same. New members may join the group over time. Then people start form rivalries with each other. Characters abilities are tested. Then suddenly things just go to hell and the group starts trying to kill eachother. That's what's fun about HL2RP. You never know what'll happen when you RP in this way and it stays interesting if you keep it going and remain IC.

CitizenRP is actually a lot fun, at least in my opinion. People often just make their citizens to get a rebel or CCA char, but why not enjoy the journey and make your factional decision AFTER you've actually developed your citizen? Sometimes, I don't even allow my characters to choose a side because I feel that it might ruin what the character has done so far.

I find it ironic that everyone is complaining on the forums trying to find an issue for the depopulation instead of actually getting on the server.

True that. I can be on tomorrow, and I will be spam-inviting people then.

I noticed the spike was really brief today. I have stated it before, but I feel it bears stating again: the admins are not here to provide you with events at all times. The idea is to RP on your own and make your own path, not have us barrage you with events and push your characters around that way. And besides, if we had events every time people pushed for them(or else were standing around the plaza fondling themselves and waiting for something to happen), they wouldn't really be anything special. The idea of events is that they're uncommon things that aren't everyday. If we do them every day, then the whole idea loses all meaning.

General Bravo wrote:the admins are not here to provide you with events at all times. The idea is to RP on your own and make your own path

Can't do that if no one will talk to you because errbuddy's OOC

People seem to have forgotten what roleplay really is. Nobody cares for developing their characters, branching stories and IC interactions with other characters. Now it's all one big OOC screw-fest where minges are allowed to freely roam the plaza, people obsess over trying to get items/weapons, events and ERP, and nobody is actually roleplaying. Even I myself have begun to lose interest. The spark the made The Crew what it is just seems to be gone.

How are we any better than LemonPunch or DarkRP (which are arguably the same thing) in this sense? Whatever it was that made TC so special when I first joined up needs to be restored ASAP or I think this population loss will be consistent.

My idea is to get everyone to operate on the same level. Make C18 an open world to explore, make the factions harder to get into, make the CCA more into their jobs, and make citizens feel like citizens.

I want CCA applications to be fluid and easy so people can apply and actual higher ups can accept/deny within moments. I want Citizen Data to update easily and I want Citizens to be able to see it. I want new citizens to enjoy being citizens while they work to get into a new faction. I want rebels to treat new citizens LIKE CITIZENS and make them work more than ONE job to get into the Rebel Group. I want currency to be based on Rations and how many loyalist points you have, the more you have the more rations you get = more money as well. I want CWU workers to be on frequently and often have the store open with furniture and food as well as other items and I want the prices to be HIGH. I want characters of all factions (Except CCA and Enslaved Biotic) to be able to buy apartments and customize them with ease, and then save that format and be able to load it when ever they join in. (This would be a donator perk) I want admins to have limited access to Observer so we cant just fly around and jerk off all day long by seeing whats coming or spawning in items or anything else that is abusing your powers. You know who you are, I am guilty of some things too. And most of all, I want everyone to just feel... at home. Like you could say, do, or RP anything you like. Providing its within combine restrictions.

Over all, we rely to much on instant gratification. RP should take time, days, weeks even.

I feel like we got a good player base here. We were at 20/20 for awhile, if we just make some changes now we can adapt to the style quickly. Especially the new users. After a few days of that, maybe we could discuss a map switch.

But right now I want to change the way RP works for a bit, maybe we could find out what is so great about those other communities by just experimenting. A map change will come, we just need a little more time to dink around with the settings. Some of you may be bored because of the map, but this has happened on many other maps we have used. We need to make RP more exciting and try to make it so if you want to be apart of it, you can simply stumble upon it in the open map of C18. If it were Rebels you found, they may tell you to get lost or to beat it. If you didn't, they may draw guns. If you still insist not to leave, they beat you up and leave you unconscious. Something like that. For this to work really well, a large map is needed. I want it to be like a Bethesda game, if that helps you picture it. No where is truly off limits, every door has a key, and every valley can be crossed. What you may find, and what may happen on the other side, well that is the danger of the RP.

i think the most fun thing about being citizen is roleplaying in the apartments
everyone working cohesively and not much looc

what i dont find fun is when i have to wander aimlessly in plaza, pairing up with random people and talking to them before them running off to their admin party to go erp in the cwu backroom
or having to try to nudge myself along the slums hardpoint looking for any cracks in the building so i can slip through and beg rebels for roleplay

maybe you guys should focus on what people want, and why they want to come back before making all these groundbreaking changes
after all its an interesting server that makes people come back, if tc is like every other server out there then they can just join another server for the same effect

Bottom line, I think, is that we could have a mixture of the incredibly deep and detailed RP from C08 with SOME of Diablo's ideas. Diablo, I'm sorry, but some of these just aren't going to work out too well. If you have an open-world game, you need a ton of NPCs or PCs to populate it. For instance, TES IV: Oblivion has about 1000 NPCs populating it's world, and still you can walk down roads for 30 minutes straight and not come across any indication of human life. And don't even get me started on the first Elder Scrolls game, "Arena".

Even the apartments are too large. We don't even use the train station area and the plaza is just terribad for RP. I am working on a map for HL2RP currently that condenses things to a good degree. We could easily fill the plaza with 9-12 people. It's taking me a longer time than I'd expected, it's about 40% complete as of now. CCA applications are already easy enough, we've got newbies with CCA chars that barely even know how to use them.

I agree with your raising prices idea and having CWU on all the time, but for that you need a lot of CWUs to begin with. The problem with apartment customization is people can build some massive porn studio and people waving around physgun beams every 5 minutes really kills immersion. I hate to break it to you, but it's a roleplay server, not a Bethesda game. We do not have a 20/20 any more to begin with, and even 20/20 isn't enough to fill up C18. I will have some screenshots of the map that will compare the size of it's locations to C18's soon, I just need to figure out how to get it to stop crashing me randomly.

I've been tweaking everything from the original design to suit TC in whatever aspects I can find. The apartments are almost perfect-size, the only problem is there is only one entrance. I need to start adding side passages to the map and make everything link up. The plaza's size is slightly smaller than C45's plaza area. The largest portion of the map is the CWU district, which includes the Hospital, Cafe', CWU HQ and other CWU-related stuff. Work on the slums has just begun, and I think you guys will love the design once it's actually in a playable state and not a big mess of orange developer textures. The total map size is almost perfect for servers that house 20-30 players maximum.

Otherwise, Diablo, the other half of your ideas are great, and I think they'd do really well for TC once introduced to the server. Oh, yeah. We really gotta cut the OOC. It's really out of hand nowadays.





Edit: You can view some WAY older, pre-alpha screenshots of the map here:
https://s1259.photobucket.com/user/Zaughi/library/RP_City17?sort=3&page=1

DIABLO258 wrote:My idea is to get everyone to operate on the same level. Make C18 an open world to explore, make the factions harder to get into...

...I want CWU workers to be on frequently and often have the store open with furniture and food as well as other items and I want the prices to be HIGH. I want characters of all factions (Except CCA and Enslaved Biotic) to be able to buy apartments and customize them with ease, and then save that format and be able to load it when ever they join in...

Over all, we rely to much on instant gratification. RP should take time, days, weeks even.

A)

It'd be difficult running a business as a CWU if there is no demand not because nobody wants it but because nobody can afford it. Rations barely happen anyway, There just isn't anything to circulate through citizens to uphold such an economy. 

B)
There needs to be something that Citizens may offer that the CCA/CWU want that they want, the clear answer is labor; but I don't frequently see jobs that aren't long-term.

I don't think factions should be harder to get into, though I do agree with a lot of Diablo is saying. I feel we shouldn't make the factions harder to get into necessarily, but just take more development, care, effort and time. Lot's of the CCA are doing a good job or WERE doing a good job, but they are just starting to slack and such. People are beginning to go into that "Why should I even bother?" state. People need more of a reason to RP on TC.

A lot of what I am seeing is people "self" rping, setting these big OOC goals for their characters and trying everything possible to get it. That's why creative things like rogues went to waste and got stereo-typed. If I make a character and say "Yeah! This is going to be my badass rebel character who will kill all the combine" then my rp will become sped up, I will try to do everything to become that character which I shouldn't do. Your characters should have a base personality, a base trait set, and a backstory. You should develop them slowly as a character like in a book. They should meld into the person they are going to become. Bilbo Baggins did not get up one day and say: "I'm going to go on an adventure and kill a dragon in The Lonely Mountain." He was taken there by an unfortunate and fortunate turn of events that he didn't even know/want to happen.

People need to understand that events that admins make should not be relyed on. An event is a happening of importance, not a common occurance, if people keep on waiting for things to happen in basically an OOC state and then reacting IC, it will get stale and boring and put unneeded pressure on staff and such. If everybody were to create creative and in depth characters with any kind of life possible (as long as it flows with the hl2 cannon) and just let all the elements and people of RP meld them into a character they become not knowing about it, they would take things slowly, and it would be a hell of a lot more interesting. If you want to benefit the CWU and economy aspects, Slashraider put time and effort into something that will work. Tokens require more of a use, CWU are just those random people that open up the shop the odd time, that's it frankly. They need to be doing more.

I say instead of making everything over priced and breaking the economy even more than it already is, (which it's pretty much nothing) we range prices so people with higher jobs can afford higher priced things. Think about it, it will give people reasons to work, it will balance the economy, it will spark and balance rp more. People don't just have to do that kind of thing with tokens, I say we also make a black market dealer sub faction or application to get the flags somehow.

If we want to start "stepping up our game" We need to actually start ACCOMPLISHING and EXPERIMENTING all of the things and suggestions we have been talking about for the past few months.

*S key not working, replacing it with a Z for now.*

Honestly I didn't really read most of the thread, but I am pretty sure it iz about the pop or something. I read some of the interesting stuff that was in colorful text cuz ADHD for the win. But anyway. I read some stuff about CWU and that brought up the part of my brain that does stuff. It'z like 8:00AM right now and I am pretty tired and at school. But anyway, People need jobs. If you want more citizen RP, then there should be more places for citizens to work. Prices should be raised, yes. But people need to make more money from things other than rations. Often it zeemz like the hospital or the CWU are the only thing open. And the CWU iznt open often. But when the hospital is open I often give workers bonuzez and what not zince az a CWU I get a salary anyway. So if somebody does a large amount of work, whatever character iz zupervizing the building should give the other worker a small bonus. Like 60-100 tokens depending on how much work iz done.

But then about no ztorez being open. This would be becuaze there aren't really any characters that are able to even open the ztorez becuaze nobody owns them. If the ztorez simply aren't a ztore then they won't open. There are like two buildings in the plaza that never even open. They need to be converted to something useful. I have ideaz but then there iz the fact that nobody could work there becuaze CWU are limited to owning only one store at a time. I had Conlon ask IC if he could own the FotoShop but CmD was like, "Nope." But if I could own more ztorez then I could hire more people. If I could hire more people, people would want to join the server becuaze they would be encouraged to RP. Promotions within the CWU are also something to look forward too I guezz. Like, in the hospital I often give employees different position. Like, Patrick Free iz the manager and haz 99% control of the hospital when Conlon isn't there. Steve iz the Supervisor and can boss around everybody except for Patrick and Conlon. Frankie Astro iz head of ER and just manage z all the people who do zurgury. Conlon = SeC Patrick = CmD Steve = Core DvL (lel) and Frankie = Helix DvL.

So basically overall I am trying to say: If we want RP to happen we need pop. If we want pop we need people to have a reason to go on. If we want people to have a reason just give them job commitments. If we want them to have jobs let Conlon or somebody else re-open the News Press and some other stores. Bam, done, might not work, but if it does then yay.

ElderViking wrote:I think we should make some changes to the community that will help bring up activity in The Crew.

1. We should have designated game nights. Invite your friends or whoever you might have to invite, and RP.

2. We should have more updates on the Steam Group, there are quite a few people in the group, so if we make announcements and start using the function that allows inviting everyone to the game we should be able to boost the pop

3. We should advertise outside of the forums and steam, perhaps with a facebook page or twitter *That one's not a GREAT idea but it could help in some degree*
Hope you find this useful.

Good idea. Do it. Do it now.

I have a great idea, but I don't know if it'll work. It's apparently really hard for a lot of people. How about this. We actually join the server? I know, I know, it sounds crazy, but maybe we can try it some time. You never know.

All anyone does then is wander around the plaza or sit around in their apartments jacking off, waiting for RP to be handed to them.

Whatever guys, just come in if you want to, try to enjoy yourselves, RP, develop your characters.. Get into fights, talk to your friends, chill in your apartments, look for work, talk about past life, you name it, do whatever you can think of. Do whatever you want as long as it doesn't conflict with the rules. just have a nice relaxing time, you are never expected to join the server, it just obviously helps and is fun when a bunch of people are on y'know? I have some things to talk about, but I'll make a recording or something later about it.

Take a few minutes to hear me out.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_tA9gRhxN1ba21QZnV1ZWxEbHc/edit?usp=sharing

Bumping