Oct 25, 2018, 02:21 AM
Here's my take on the whole thing regarding the scoreboard, HUD, the lot. By the way, whenver I refer to "civilian", I'm talking about non-government (gun dealer, BMD, anarchist, citizen, doctor, etc.). Also, Sorry Friet, I thought this was too much to be put into your megathread. I cover a lot more than just colours, here.
I also think descriptions should be removed too from the whole right clicking thing, until we get some kind of semi-permanent character system in which you can choose to create/load a character and play as them. It's too easy to change your name and forget about the description, which would just confuse the points I've made above. They need to be implemented hand-in-hand, if the description is gonna be kept on the scoreboard.
Just a footnote, please challenge me in this thread. I wanna know what people think about it, and maybe help the developers come to some sort of conclusion about what to do, because it seems like they're just looking for our reaction at the moment, and they're getting very mixed feelings by the looks of it. If we can all come to some sort of agreement on what we want, it'll be easier for them I guess.
Serious and Semi-Serious RP - Where's the line?
I think the change is really good, it's preventing metagaming, and at the same time, driving Limelight towards a more Serious RP standard, which I think is a good thing. However, like it's been previously mentioned, this causes complications with the "Semi-Serious" tag that we still hold as a community. New players will join expecting a slightly ramped up version of Dark RP, since it's City RP, but instead be greeted with an almost Serious RP-like HUD and scoreboard, which can be confusing. However we need to remember that even though these aspects are "Serious-RP"-like, the RP itself is still semi-serious. Just because we have a serious-RP styled interface, doesn't mean the RP is going to follow suit. I do think it's a good thing that we're moving to a more serious place, but I think we should be fair to new players and start thinking about where we draw the line between semi and serious RP, and when to label ourselves respectively.Player Colours
My second point is that the new colour system sounds great on paper, but it's just sorta confusing everyone, some people aren't happy with their colours, some people aren't happy with the fact they can't change their colours, some people get confused with mistaking people with certain colours to be certain jobs, etc. I think this can be changed with a few simple solutions:
a) Allow people to change their colours to whatever they like, based on a selection of options we allow them (a palette, if you will).
b) Their physgun colour is the same as their "player colour", getting deeper/darker with every donation.
c) Make everyone the same colour, but within Limelight's theme (blue, grey, white, black, "steel", etc.) Perhaps staff members have different colours so they are more easily identifyable, respective to their forum tag colours (Developer is red, admin is pink, moderator is blue, member is orange, contrib is light blue, etc).
The Government
My third point of discussion is this: the Government. Now the Government sorta need the scoreboard as a quick roster of sorts. It's always been that way and that shouldn't change if you want people to be able to enjoy government RP the way they always did. This includes changing job titles to introduce a hierarchy, divisions, taglines, unit numbers, etc.. Dispatch RP flourishes on this, keep in mind. At the stage we're at now, units are referred to as either "Chief", or "unit 123 (example)". Like how I've said in another post, I suggest the following:
In the perspective of a civilian (non-gov) opening the scoreboard, everybody is uncategorised and "jobless", except the people who you would expect them to know - the President and Vice President (as per election posters etc). Not everyone will know the Chief of Police or the Fire Chief, which would allow /showid to be used more often for these reasons, so these people should also be hidden from the scoreboard.
In the perspective of a government official, you have access to a database of knowledge describing who is who, so you can contact them in the case of a situational emergency. If you're a cop and need to call the fire dep., you can do so by calling their tagline over the radio. It's always been like this, and that should stay. I don't think we have any other choice, other than making something crazy with the police database, but that would mean relying on a Dispatcher to constantly be online, so the police aren't in and out of their DB to know who to call. For this reason, a Police DB approach wouldn't really work. Here's what I propose:
- All Government members can see all other Government members on the scoreboard, along with their respective colours as it was before this overhaul (police blue, SWAT brown, Presidency red/pink, SS dark blue, etc.). This includes medicals and fire/rescue seeing the Police, vice versa, and the Presidency seeing the police and medicals, vice versa.
- Police, SWAT, SS, EMS and Fire/Rescue should all have "taglines" that can be set through the /teamname command. This will appear on the players HUD in the bottom left as it always has, and also on the scoreboard for other government members to see. I propose this is either displayed on a new line under their name in smaller text, or at the side of their name like how it used to be. I would personally like the first option, if it's done right. With this in place, all branches of the government can use taglines and callsigns to refer to their colleagues as, instead of just "unit 123". This would prevent people self-promoting, or claiming to be a Sergeant when they're just a patrol unit. People would need to consult the Chief every time someone claims to be a rank that they're likely not.
Seeing IC names/descriptions etc. in the scoreboard
Now I think for this point, it's sorta subjective on whether people want a more serious or less serious approach to this overhaul. I personally want a more serious approach, which is why I'm opinionating in this direction. You can agree or disagree with me as you see fit. I personally think that character names should remain hidden from the scoreboard, apart from when working hand-in-hand with the suggestion made in the Government section of this post. Government should be able to see other government members' names, etc. Everybody should be able to see the President's and Vice President's name, but nobody should be able to see civilian's names on the scoreboard.
I think this would help because you wouldn't be able to metagame who's playing what character. For example, if I want someone dead and I see ForceGhost's Givens character on the scoreboard, I'm more likely to PM him than anyone else to get my dirty work done, because I know he's known for that kind of RP when playing that character. If I couldn't see this information, I would have to actively go out of my contraband base or whatever it is I'm doing, and ask around, creating all SORTS of RP opportunities (running into undercover cops, etc.). Your name is who you identify as, and if people know that name well enough, they know what you're willing to do on that character, removing a lot of the personal investigation process previously mentioned.
I also think descriptions should be removed too from the whole right clicking thing, until we get some kind of semi-permanent character system in which you can choose to create/load a character and play as them. It's too easy to change your name and forget about the description, which would just confuse the points I've made above. They need to be implemented hand-in-hand, if the description is gonna be kept on the scoreboard.
Just a footnote, please challenge me in this thread. I wanna know what people think about it, and maybe help the developers come to some sort of conclusion about what to do, because it seems like they're just looking for our reaction at the moment, and they're getting very mixed feelings by the looks of it. If we can all come to some sort of agreement on what we want, it'll be easier for them I guess.