Citizen/ResistanceRP

[Would you like some 3.14159265?]

This needs to be looked at, seriously considered, and then dealt with soon as possible. Everyone list suggestions here.

[smt]

This isn't really a suggestion, if you think citizen RP is lacking then admins need to know why and we need suggestions to fix it, if it was a simple and obvious fix to make the entire server perfect we'd have done it by now

[Lone Wanderer <??"?]

Well, too start off, ResistanceRP gets little to no admin attention. I always see admins doing events for loyalists/CCA members, never some kind of event aimed at Resistance. Sure, add a weather event or a general event that effects the entirety of the server. But I have never in my time here at CG seen an event aimed at developing the resistance here. Sure, there's the recent uprising event in City 45, and the map change for Outlands. But did that develop the Resistance? No. No it did not, not at all. Admins (and oz jackal) basically ran those events, with people tagging along the way (I'd like to add that's my impression from what I've been told and read about the two events, as I couldn't attend either due to work *sadface*). But, take the Outlands event for example. The Lambda Movement? Please, where is that coming from? That's some asspulled group to give 'the escape' from the outlands. But in the end, where did stuff like that go in regards for the Resistance? Nowhere, quite honestly. There's still that empty sense that there's nothing out there for a 'real resistance' aside from a few people with guns roaming around.

Now, I've always gotten the impression that the Resistance is supposed to grow organically here, generally without the help of the administration. I honestly don't know why that is, as I've never gotten a legitimate reason as to why that approach exists. The Resistance is argueably tied in importance with the CCA, yet it gets brushed under the rug and left to collect dust. Go into P3, ask about the Resistance. ICly? People will tell you that it either doesn't really exist, give you the information for a rag tag murderous gang that rapes loyalists, or tell you they are loyal to the Union. Ask OOCly? People will accuse you of being a lolwebul, point out a group of muderous rapists like above, or tell you they don't know all too much about the Resistance. That's a problem, because for one, the resistance is not a muderous group of thugs. Yet that's basically what fills that gap in the absence of any form of a true resistance organization.

Using my group, the Brotherhood, as an example. We were a self-made resistance group that held to actual resistance values, at least by my standards. We were secretive, wanted to help out citizens with food, rest, aid, medical supplies, etc. We wanted to discretely figure out about the Union, and discretely spread propoganda to support our cause. Now, I will say I enjoyed that experience a lot, and it was all good fun. But what made it horrible was the swarms of loyalists that flooded into P3, metagaming, looking for trouble, etc. Now, while stuff like this was happening, CCA units were accepting all these rather detailed reports on us without asking any real question why (I know this because I watched a fair amount of reports), and the administration didn't really pay any attention to it. So, what happened? Well, ZEALOT began to clamp down on us, and after awhile, we got rounded up and executed. Now, I will admit we did get a bit pushy, and I'm not attacking ZEALOT in anyway. They did their job. But the admins didn't. Our roleplay/development was torn apart by the lack of rule/proper RP enforcement in P3. Metagaming happened, loyalists powergamed to get away, shit just generally got to out of hand. And where did I generally see the admins? Playing on their CCA units.

Now, that's just regarding rules and proper RP. What makes me even more upset about this issue is the level of support the two groups get. The CCA get's a huge amount of admin support. The get supplied equipment (which is obvious, they have the places to get it), the get name changes/rank updates, they get supported on S4 projects and the like (dat APC). Where I don't find a ton of administrative support is the resistance aspect of things. The only real way to get equipment in the ways of weaponary is to get lucky, and I've got no problem with that system. Weapons = A+. But IC equipment like food, medical supplies, clothing, and general IC stuff (like furniture, radios, electronics, books, every day life stuff) comes through auth apps or the v flag menu. Stuff to make the resistance diverse and unique doesn't come easily, and usually through the form of a auth app that takes a few hours to make, and longer to get reviewed an accepted, potentially denied. Whereas CCA units just go to a locker, open it up, and get access to fresh equipment, food, weapons, ammo, and the whole lot of it.

Now, it's obviously not easy for normal citizens/resistance members to get access to all this stuff. But there should be some level of support from the administration where they feed in some of this stuff into the system, making it so it's actually possible to obtain it. That's the main reason I find people straying away from taking the resistance route. It's too hard, and the end outcome isn't worth the effort. You make a character, develop them over a few months with a few auth apps, get some connections and supplies, and then get caught by CCA/OTA when you try to do something because you don't have an organized resistance to turn to.

My suggestion to fix this? Get a few admins who are dedicated to supporting the resistance. Have them spend a majority of their time on a resistance-affiliated character, maybe acting as a supplier of sorts. Allow them to filter ICly supplies like medical stuff(pills, AEDs, non-v flag medical supplies generally), varying clothing aside from normal uniforms, food/drinks, ammo, parts for different things, information, etc. That's just a start. Events that are focused on Resistance would be an excellent way to do this. IE: supply cache gets found, a truck of supplies come through, etc.



tl;dr version: admins need to stop focusing on CCA because thats not the center of HL2. the reason why the server isnt gaining a ton of new people is because there's a circlejerk with the CCA and the resistance is non-existant, making the server one sided and bland. No one's going to make a resistance for the cca to oppose if its close to impossible for a resistance to get started/exist, and then only find all their efforts to be futile because the cca comes in for an epic one hour operation where they kill all the resistance members and capute teh #1 BOL!!! Then we all get to wait for another three-five months for it to happen all over again.

[The Doctor, RIP Juggernaut]

Honestly, most of the ego the CCA has needs to be removed. Lone is right, The CCA constantly belittle the resistance, the entire SA staff is/was CCA, most of the admins are, I think the only two resistance admins here are bloody Molly and Statua. Ya'll try to lock a dynamic/s of role play in outlands with OTA being OP as fuck, believe it or not firefights are fun and people would/will accept PK's/will PK themselves, it adds fun it makes outlands a little more dangerous, it gives OTA death role play it give rebels more death role play/the mentality of really fighting a war, you lock this because its "Realistic" but its fairly off canon and honestly, it seems like its because no one on the CCA/combine side likes to P2L.

Ya'll constantly bash "Bad asses" like Skyler, Dave, Matt, and the other oldfags who've survived this long and have the shit to show for it.
And whats with EVERYONE from the combine just down right hating /EVERYONE/ with a vest? People bitch about how some of us aren't really inviting when it comes to new people and some of us point AR2's at people, guess what, normally we've told them to leave already/we're trying to do some personal and private RP and people just waltz right in like its no big deal and are like "GIMME ROLE PLAY GIMME ROLE PLAY NAO!!!!!!!!!!" the AR2 is a scary fucking weapon to have pointed at your character and it gets people to leave when they're intruding like that. These people that you are bashing and saying "Needs to go away" are the kind of people that make up the leadership in Outlands and are the ones that would GLADLY take a PK if asked but instead they get belittled, insulted and some times down right flamed for just, being lucky and surviving that long. It makes some of us just want to quit.

I can't say much about the city other then what I see on the fourms, but admins do need to pay more attention to the resistance, it seems like there are only one or two groups that get away with them purely because of who leads them OOCly(Third eye) that are like protected from all hell, compared to other groups(Like the brotherhood) who are left as chopped meat. The CCA doesn't /NEED/ to kill every single resistance group out there. The numbers for the CCA also need to be cut down quite a bit, yes I know everyone is going to get buttmad about losing their character(Like they accuse outties players of doing) but honestly, it seems like /everyone/ is a CCA, we don't have the numbers of active people to sustain that, we took a massive hit after the whole Gmod 13 and haven't fully recovered and we need to adjust for that.

Adding a bit more to this rant: Most of the time when it comes to deciding stuff and P2whatever for whoever, I honestly think that OTA can take quite a number of hits, the number of engagements are going to go a hell of a lot down, but there's a lot of times that I question when things have to be decided OOCly for reason about bias(To people and factions), A lot of times people expect Rebels to P2L 100% of the time and miss 100% of the time, Grenades also should /NEVER EVER EVER/ be used in firefights, the system for using them is totally messed up and there is no good way to use them with out failure(Flash bangs, HE grenades(Which is what they are, get it right) don't register props so you can't hide behind them to avoid damage(Which you may or may not be able to OOCly) and you can't react to them properly because you have no idea where its going to land /till it lands/ and then you don't have enough time to react to them properly. And they're used as a P2W crutch a lot and it needs to stop, they don't allow Rebels/the other side to win /at all/ and should go away(Where'd flashes even come from? the combines asses?).

OTA's role should be to make people afraid to be alone, this creates groups, and this creates such a massive field of roleplay that people on outlands want /SO BADLY/, but the only way to do this is if OTA let them selves be killed/retreat when fired upon more and prove that when people are together they're safer. 

[Hazard Time]

@Lone There was talk of setting up a black market underground, but who the hell knows where that's gone.  I do agree with you that the administration team shows an overwhelming support to the CCA and absolutely none to the anti-citizens.  While this is partly because the CCA is supposed to have unlimited resources at their command, I also see what looks like a general lack of interest in the resistance on behalf of the admin team.  The last good resistance event I remember was back on City 18 when a group dropped boxes of contraband food and IC scrapbooks detailing CCA brutality off the bridge.  I don't see why something like that should not happen again, and don't think raged would act against that.  He may be a dick frequently, but he knows what RP is.

@Jugger OTA are OP for a reason.  They are the best equipped and best trained units in the Trans-Human forces, and they are a force to be FEARED.  As an OTA char myself, I can tell you we don't care if we die, ICly or OOCly, because the only point of the OTA is to cause Fear RP.  They're like the terminators from TRP, they are a constant threat that are awoken at your own risk.  Also, we go out of our way to avoid the main centers of RP when patrolling.  Not once have we paraded down Belles Town road without a very damn good reason.  We don't go looking for a fight, only to keep the roads clear. 

[Lone Wanderer <??"?]

I actually highly respect raged for his choices that he made in regards to the resistance characters I've had, and the groups I've been a part of. He's done a really good job at trying to sort out those lolreports, I've found, and tries to sit back as much as possible, until we start causing real problems of course. But yeah, I gotta give props to raged. He's a good guy who doesn't afraid of anything.

As to OTA, they're OP, yes. They're augmented, yes. They've got neato equipment and excellent training. But they aren't invincible. While I don't think any of the current status on their training and equipment should be changed really, I think that the attitude of a standard OTA unit does. They aren't invincible, as I said not too long ago, and their equipment doesn't make it so. Their body armour allows them to less damage, but an automatic at close range would rip that apart. So, when they get in firefights with some gun fellow in the Outlands, if they get shot, they're going to take the damage. Will the augments give em' a little boost of strength to keep them going for a bit longer than a normal human? Definetely. But OTA can't go running around acting like they're a metal machine, because kevlar, a uniform, and skin isn't going to stop a bullet in close proximity combat.

And touching on the P2L issue, there's an issue with it. Resistance people are always expected to s2m, yet OTA aren't. Sure, training. Use that arguement. But at close range, with the person having experience with a gun, it shouldn't be hard to hit a large uniformed target at around 6'7" weighing in at 400+ pounds. Same thing goes with CCA units. You can'y always expect resistance members to lose. CCA/OTA units have to do it sometimes as well, that's a part of making roleplay diverse instead of having one side win all the time. If that happens, there's no point in even making a resistance character, because you're going to just die the moment things go south, or if you get confronted by Union members at all.

[Dallas]

Is this like... A rant thread about the server or something? I dunno if you guys noticed but the CCA is in a severe state of vulnerability brought on by the reform so use that opportunity- I know I am, and so are several others.

[Khub]

Now, I've always gotten the impression that the Resistance is supposed to grow organically here, generally without the help of the administration. I honestly don't know why that is, as I've never gotten a legitimate reason as to why that approach exists. The Resistance is argueably tied in importance with the CCA, yet it gets brushed under the rug and left to collect dust. Go into P3, ask about the Resistance. ICly? People will tell you that it either doesn't really exist, give you the information for a rag tag murderous gang that rapes loyalists, or tell you they are loyal to the Union. Ask OOCly? People will accuse you of being a lolwebul, point out a group of muderous rapists like above, or tell you they don't know all too much about the Resistance. That's a problem, because for one, the resistance is not a muderous group of thugs. Yet that's basically what fills that gap in the absence of any form of a true resistance organization.

If people fail to respond to your proper question in OOC seriously, they are breaking rules of the server, report them to an administrator. We can't change behaviour of our players with a swing of a magical stick, they need to change themselves. Same goes for their roleplaying standards and behaviour in general.

Using my group, the Brotherhood, as an example. We were a self-made resistance group that held to actual resistance values, at least by my standards. We were secretive, wanted to help out citizens with food, rest, aid, medical supplies, etc. We wanted to discretely figure out about the Union, and discretely spread propoganda to support our cause. Now, I will say I enjoyed that experience a lot, and it was all good fun. But what made it horrible was the swarms of loyalists that flooded into P3, metagaming, looking for trouble, etc. Now, while stuff like this was happening, CCA units were accepting all these rather detailed reports on us without asking any real question why (I know this because I watched a fair amount of reports), and the administration didn't really pay any attention to it. So, what happened? Well, ZEALOT began to clamp down on us, and after awhile, we got rounded up and executed. Now, I will admit we did get a bit pushy, and I'm not attacking ZEALOT in anyway. They did their job. But the admins didn't. Our roleplay/development was torn apart by the lack of rule/proper RP enforcement in P3. Metagaming happened, loyalists powergamed to get away, shit just generally got to out of hand. And where did I generally see the admins? Playing on their CCA units.

It's hard to prove metagaming. It starts with a new player who doesn't know the limits between OOC and IC and reads the name in chat, then passes the metagamed name alone to people who believe they got it in a legitimate way, though it's often not that way. It's hard to prove that an information was actually metagamed and even then, the punishments aren't even worth mentioning - hence why I'd moan about it, if I was reported "metagaming help".

My suggestion to fix this? Get a few admins who are dedicated to supporting the resistance. Have them spend a majority of their time on a resistance-affiliated character, maybe acting as a supplier of sorts. Allow them to filter ICly supplies like medical stuff(pills, AEDs, non-v flag medical supplies generally), varying clothing aside from normal uniforms, food/drinks, ammo, parts for different things, information, etc. That's just a start. Events that are focused on Resistance would be an excellent way to do this. IE: supply cache gets found, a truck of supplies come through.

I don't know about other admins, but I was never told to make an event like this, and the event suggestions board doesn't contain any thread with a suggestion like yours. Don't blame the admin team completely, if you actually made a suggestion about such an event, I believe it'd get accepted. Nobody restricts you from getting a blackmarket character. If an admin makes one, they'll get blamed for being selective, for not selling to everyone, for asspulling stuff, and the list goes on.

If you want to get help for your resistance / rebellious characters, no one restricts you from contacting an administrator. Feel free to contact me on Steam / via PM's and I'll try to provide you support you require. We can't read minds, you need to ask yourself.

[Yak]

As Oz said, though I have vague knowledge on clandestine cell structures, it's actually very useful to avoid compromise of your whole group over one man. Though it is quite frustrating to having no idea who your allies are sometimes.
I've always liked the concept of dead drops though it would be hard to pull off ICly without being accused of metagaming.

Spoiler for Hiden:

if the cell leader of ALPINE is killed, the informants or the innocent members are cut off from the group and the local officer impersonally or personally connected with both ALPINE and ALTITUDE could inform ALTITUDE about a cell being 'shot down'. This doesn't have to be through speech personally, it could be with dead drops or a radio freq. The only authority figure they know to contact is their local officer, thus keeping the group more confidential.
It didn't make much sense to me until I actually started paying attention and discussed it with someone.

[Airborne1st]

I haven't taken the time to read everyone's post completely in this thread, but skimming over it, I can see a few points that have been raised that I have an answer for. Please excuse me if these points have already been stated by someone else.

Regarding what Lone said about resistance getting very little admin attention, its partly because there is no official resistance at CG, however the CCA and OTA are official. As for the issue of events, nearly every loyalist event has the potential for a resistance group to come disrupt it. As admins, we literally keep that in mind when doing loyalist and CCA events. I think what many people fail to understand is that during events, you can do anything you want. Just because the CCA are taking part in an event, doesn't mean it has to be CCA oriented completely. If you want resistance involved in events more, either a) suggest actual events that can be done that's easier for resistance characters to partake in, or b) find ways to interact with the events that are done. A good example of what I'm talking about was that loyalist tea party we had before we changed the map from C45. After the tea party with the CA's, we had rations in which the RDT was bombed, resulting in the death of a unit (permanently) and quite a few injuries. Yes, the bomb had to be authed but still, its proof that events can be altered by anyone at any time, including resistance characters.

Regarding Lone's comment about the usual responses of a resistance in P3, that's because the resistance is what the players make it. When capable people step up and make an actual organized group that's good a role playing and is capable of not making themselves so obvious, you'll have a good resistance group. A good resistance group, you should never actually hear about by just asking anyone.

As for Lone's comment about how rule breaking resulted in the death of his organized rebel group, don't blame the admins if you didn't call for them or make ban requests, etc. We can't see every little thing that happens on the server, especially when no one says anything. If the admins didn't do their job, then make an admin complaint on them with proof of it.

Regarding Jugger's first comment about how there are only two admins that focus on rebel RP, its because there's a server for rebel RP. Its called Outlands and those two admins only play on that server, which is why they focus on it so much.

I said it earlier in this thread and I'll say it again as the main point I want to make. Resistance RP is what the players make it. Sure, admin help can boost it, but we're not going to just get on our admin characters and spawn guns for everyone. CG has no official resistance. The resistance relies on you guys, the players. Its supposed to be a player controlled and player ran faction with the admin team mostly having their hands off to let you guys do what you want within reason. As Khub said, if you feel you need admin help with anything just add one of us on steam and we'll help you however we can.

[Statua]

In class so tl;dr. Just skimmed a little.

In the past on outlands, resistance groups flouroshed. Resistance leaders were players, not admins. They lead large, well known groups. All that worked fine until summer 2012. I made leonard crazy and all the resistance groups fell apart. What should we do then guys? Should I start up another alliance? Or do you guys think you can get your own groups going without guidance?

And yes i do focus 90% of my time on outlands. Why? Cause if outlands wasnt here, i would have no need to be hl2rp admin. idk why but city is no longer appealing.

[BltElite]

A long time ago we shunned resistance stuff.

We don't now, we don't exactly support it but, but we don't shove it down when it climbs out the plughole as a spider would.

Try and interrupt CCA events or loyalist ones, we don't stop you and if admins stop you tell them politely where to shove it because they shouldn't.


Just because were not all out "hurr im rebel" doesnt mean were not anti loyalist characters and so on. We're just a lot more secretive.

[Sexy Frog]

I haven't taken the time to read everyone's post completely in this thread, but skimming over it, I can see a few points that have been raised that I have an answer for. Please excuse me if these points have already been stated by someone else.

Regarding what Lone said about resistance getting very little admin attention, its partly because there is no official resistance at CG, however the CCA and OTA are official. As for the issue of events, nearly every loyalist event has the potential for a resistance group to come disrupt it. As admins, we literally keep that in mind when doing loyalist and CCA events. I think what many people fail to understand is that during events, you can do anything you want. Just because the CCA are taking part in an event, doesn't mean it has to be CCA oriented completely. If you want resistance involved in events more, either a) suggest actual events that can be done that's easier for resistance characters to partake in, or b) find ways to interact with the events that are done. A good example of what I'm talking about was that loyalist tea party we had before we changed the map from C45. After the tea party with the CA's, we had rations in which the RDT was bombed, resulting in the death of a unit (permanently) and quite a few injuries. Yes, the bomb had to be authed but still, its proof that events can be altered by anyone at any time, including resistance characters.

Regarding Lone's comment about the usual responses of a resistance in P3, that's because the resistance is what the players make it. When capable people step up and make an actual organized group that's good a role playing and is capable of not making themselves so obvious, you'll have a good resistance group. A good resistance group, you should never actually hear about by just asking anyone.

As for Lone's comment about how rule breaking resulted in the death of his organized rebel group, don't blame the admins if you didn't call for them or make ban requests, etc. We can't see every little thing that happens on the server, especially when no one says anything. If the admins didn't do their job, then make an admin complaint on them with proof of it.

Regarding Jugger's first comment about how there are only two admins that focus on rebel RP, its because there's a server for rebel RP. Its called Outlands and those two admins only play on that server, which is why they focus on it so much.

I said it earlier in this thread and I'll say it again as the main point I want to make. Resistance RP is what the players make it. Sure, admin help can boost it, but we're not going to just get on our admin characters and spawn guns for everyone. CG has no official resistance. The resistance relies on you guys, the players. Its supposed to be a player controlled and player ran faction with the admin team mostly having their hands off to let you guys do what you want within reason. As Khub said, if you feel you need admin help with anything just add one of us on steam and we'll help you however we can.

Basically, everything Airborne said. Administration can only do so much in the resistance department. By so much, I mean authorization applications, advice and such. We can't hold your hands and spoon feed you. The reason we support CCA and OTA and CWU so much is because, like airborne said, they are official. Players are responsible for resistance. And like Oz said, you should be thankful for S2 tearing down groups other than your own. That way you can improve yourselves for the better so to not fall to the same fate. Not only that, even if you are the ones caught, you can learn to not be so open, because you are clearly doing something wrong. 

I've also recently made a small rant not too long ago about not giving specific suggestions which would tie in here quite well. People moan and complain about the lack of events for resistance. Not too long ago it was the lack of events in general. We are not psychics,  we can't know what you want unless you tell us specifically. We dedicated our time to making events to stop people from complaining about the lack of events and then you lot turn around and find something else.

You want resistance events? Suggest them, don't just say "there r no rebel eventsssss rageeee", take initiative.  We make loyalist and CCA events with resistance in mind for the most part. Resistance have had countless opportunities to flourish, it's just players not acting on them.

At the end of the day, rebelRP quality and frequency falls on you guys.

[kronik]

I didn't read the entire thread but I completely agree that resistance characters need to have more opportunity to actually roleplay beyond passive. Complete passive gets old and pointless, it's fun at first but once you've been doing it for months it's just plain and boring. Suggest events if you have really good ideas for them, not things like "blow up the nexus xD."

[raged]

I mugged a unit and you could tell how bias some admins were being against my character and metagamed a fair bit to try and get me captured. While I lead S2 I have been running a 'low tier' criminal faction to essentially harass some of the CCA and if I didn't have crossing responsibilities with leading s2 I could easily make it into a bigger organisation, it's not hard guys, you just need initiative and to actually plan things.