(May 4, 2020, 02:20 PM)Jessie Wrote: [ -> ]The lack of actual content is not helpful either
I've not experienced anything new in over two years other than the new fishing and accessories (which I approve of) For long-time players, it's literally the SAME stuff, it might be interesting for new players, since they haven't explored it yet.
Yeah, the server is based on roleplay, and it's the players responsibility to create scenarios which interest people, but a majority of the roleplays people make either go unnoticed or have very little interaction, there isn't any actual benefit for doing passiveRP, you just do
"can I buy a drink?"
"sure, it'll be 1,50$"
"/me gives 1.50$"
and so on, there isn't any ACTUAL functions that make it interesting, and usually people only really roleplay if there are staff / teachers on who can potentially see the roleplay and give them a rep for it, which is a benefit. I mean, you don't see anyone doing passiveRP anymore, it's always related to crime, because you actually get something from it, like the Mafia roleplays, you can extort businesses, rob, place hits on people, and the police RP also gain from that, so 90% of the time on the server, it's ALWAYS cops and robbers style roleplay.
Another example of this is the chef job, all you do is use the F1 Menu, and you have your food straight away, when you try to roleplay, people just hurry you up because they don't want to sit through the process of cooking the food, because it's all /me /it based which can just be skipped and then the buyer can just go back to whatever they were doing.
Yeah, just make suggestions. Okay, we'll make a suggestion, and it's not the developers fault, but it takes a long time for a suggestion to be actually implemented into the server, by that time, people are already leaving and getting bored of the server.
As much as I love the new map, and the new possibilities for roleplay, give it a few months, and people will be bored again, and doing the same things they were doing on Rockford, Truenorth, Evocity and SouthSide.
You'd be surprised how many new mechanics are being developed or have been developed as we speak. From what I've seen the problem is that there is only a finite amount of devs and contributors, and overtime many of them leave simply due to the negative feedback they often get from the community (such as "no updates or content every month").
Plus, we are not even like an indie company where our fulltime job is working on our IP/game, but I'm sure that 99% of us are doing this as a part-time job or a hobby to train us for future big companies that we might be working for.
Here is a little something.
Playing on the new map was pretty incredible. We had multiple interesting Roleplay scenarios being created for nearly everyone.
I even saw this one great fire scene where the building entrance collapsed leaving the two first responding firefighters trapped inside, so ESU used a bearcat to remove the debris from the entryway to allow other firefighters to go in.
And then I was on a scene where someone went .// Can I leave? Server is still boring.
I feel like instead of going out and making an effort to create some Roleplay situations, many just sit back and wait for one to happen, and that is why some find it boring.
Lots of very good points have been made here. We're having serious discussions on these both within the team and now with the community input group on the best way forward. I'll try and break it into different sections, but for now the main focus is on the rules and enforcement issue:
Rules and enforcement
A few of you will remember that I've been against the vast amount of rules for quite a while, but it's always been an uphill battle to deal with. It finally feels as though there's been a real shift in staff attitudes towards this, partly due to all of the feedback, and just partly due to trying to tackle it in a smarter way (i.e. more nuanced than just replacing absolutely everything with a GM mechanic or just removing everything and not worrying about edge cases).
There's a lot of agreement that restrictive rules are definitely not a good thing, but there were several underlying reasons why these haven't been properly tackled earlier, the really key ones being:
- A small group of people taking things way too far with increased freedom and ruining other's experiences;
- Wanting to enforce rules as fairly as possible for everyone, requiring strict and well-defined rulesets for admins and players to follow. This includes avoiding issues where one admin might say something is fine then the other says its a problem;
- Trying to minimise grey areas in the rules in support of 2.
The last proposed ways to deal with these were gamemode changes so that rules are artificially enforced by gamemode mechanics, but this has been difficult to implement due to challenges at basically every step, be it failed community votes on the exact implementation, failed admin votes and resistance from staff, or just technical challenges. What we're looking towards this time is more of a two-pronged approach, with a heavy emphasis on the first prong:
- Identify what rules are these because of the issues stated above. This seems to be most of them. We can then remove or severely reduce these rules and allow increased RP flexibility and freedom so long as the edge cases can now be guarded against using 1.5 more;
- to prevent unfairness, more internal guidelines would be drafted up for admins so that there's at least a consistent approach to moderating the extreme edge cases. Otherwise, things can just continue more freely. Basically, more things at admin discretion so there's more freedom overall;
- Where possible, still aim to replace some things with gamemode mechanics. Examples could include removing all hostage rules (except perhaps don't hostage emergency services with radio bait) by having a % chance every x mins to free yourself.
The remainder of rules can then either be removed or kept as necessary. We're going through this now and will continue to do so with feedback from community input, but I'm hopeful that a vast majority of the rules can be removed or replaced in this way. Of course, it'll be quite the HR effort to make sure that this flexibility can work, but it's a much better alternative than stifling everyone with insane amounts of rules. Hopefully implementation and pushing things through the staff team won't be a huge issue, but the support now seems to be there.
The other issues
I'm not grouping everything here all together because they're less important; I'm doing so because there's a finite amount we can reasonably focus on at once and if I'm honest, the biggest thing that has killed every attempted big new project or overhaul in the past has been inflated scope, which often coincides with the person writing the scope not having any responsibilities to actually implement them. So the key focus for now is only rules and enforcement (some exceptions for optimisation as that's standard dev work). The rest will come in due time.
Economy
Mentioned a few times. Very fair points made that it's hyper-inflated. It's definitely on our radar and something a lot of people want to address but the best ways to do this still aren't clear. Quick, 'obvious' solutions just wiping the DB come with a whole other host of issues that need addressing, and again, it's often the people who don't have to implement or solve these issues who propose them so strongly. This attitude can and does genuinely cause major problems in getting things done; not just in here, but basically everywhere I've worked.
Any solution to this would probably involve steady development (i.e. using MESKA more, crafting, creating the character system we've been slowly building towards) to steadily solve issues rather than sweeping changes, but those could be considered also.
Map
We've had a million topics on this. But it's clear that map changes alone won't fix anything by now.
Performance
Many core problems with the gamemode have been worked on over the past few years and things do improve bit by bit. The next target, I believe, is improving HUD fps. Vehicles are a tricky one as they're really not suitable for Source, as Goigle said, especially with addons thrown on top. But again, we've done a lot of work here and will continue to do so - a lot of our dev funding has gone towards fixing technical debt, which brings me to..
New gamemode
Same problem with economy. Nearly every time this or similar large-scale changes are proposed, it's by people who have no development responsibility, little understanding of the technical work involved in detail, and little understanding of the many changes to core systems and technical debt improvements that have been made over the years.
This is a much bigger problem than these people ever assume, especially for a team exclusively comprising part-timers and hobbyists. It's also a pretty wasteful mentality; why ignore all the investment and work into fixing technical debt and core systems when this can now be leveraged to make significant improvements? Yes, sometimes core sub-systems do have to be ripped out in their entirety and replaced, but that's a trade-off that only developers can make with any accurate knowledge.
I've worked for a lot of project managers on a variety of technical projects, and to be honest, very few of them seemed to understand the many problems in their project management resulting from a failure to understanding technical systems. The only project managers I've worked with who genuinely did appreciate the time and cost involved with developing things have been systems engineers in the space industry; everywhere else, it's been the same problem. Unrealistic timelines, unrealistic cost and manpower budgets, minimal technical knowledge, and little personal responsibility in getting things done when blame can be shifted onto development staff with ease.
Does this mean a new gamemode is impossible? No, of course not, the volume of gamemodes out there clearly proves it is. But is the trade-off worth it when you consider the vast amount of systems we already have in place, including several years worth of core work on fixing technical debt and providing a more stable, flexible and well-documented interface with which to develop new gamemode mechanics? It's not something we'll ever dismiss entirely, but there had better be damned good proof that this is a worthwhile investment and the proof shouldn't just be rooted in the same underdeveloped project management memes every developer on the planet has heard and cringed at several times already. You need a seriously good project manager with a serious understanding of development to achieve this.
New mechanics/removing mechanics
Now this makes more sense, as we have a much-improved base to work from. Both of these are possibilities, but they'll be handled as individual dev projects. We just need to refine the roadmap so we have less of a scattergun approach.
TL;DR
- We're focusing on dramatically reducing rules for now by removing several rules or replacing with mechanics
- Edge cases and admin fairness will be mitigated by increased internal staff guidelines and rule 1.5
- There seems to be more staff support for this than before so hopefully it'll work
- Working on this now internally and with community input group
- Other issues will be considered separately because scope creep sucks and people always forget it when proposing we change tons of things. All in good time.
So long as we can get a grip on people abusing the loose rules to make the server a hostile environment, I'm willing to try a significant decrease in rules
it was more fun when you could do /job Dictator and then /tax 40, that was pretty much the most exciting part of the server 70% of the time
(Apr 27, 2020, 08:03 AM)Catfish Wrote: [ -> ]Quick note here, the photograph you have is of the Secret Service Uniformed Division, who is still a protection service, not an active patrolling law enforcement agency that responds to calls and actively polices the public, unless near or on federally protected property such as the White House.
As found on their official website here: https://www.secretservice.gov/join/caree...VEQAvD_BwE
The best part about what youre saying is that it is completely wrong. The secret service IRL would respond to calls of money laundering, counterfit production and things like they. Diplomatic protection is more of a secondary and a completley different division. If you have a job named "Sercret Service Agent" let them do all aspects of the jobs that Secret Service do, its not specific enough to limit people to only diplomatic protection. But i guess im wrong because the secret service website says so :shrug:
(May 18, 2020, 04:04 PM)Maveric Wrote: [ -> ] (Apr 27, 2020, 08:03 AM)Catfish Wrote: [ -> ]Quick note here, the photograph you have is of the Secret Service Uniformed Division, who is still a protection service, not an active patrolling law enforcement agency that responds to calls and actively polices the public, unless near or on federally protected property such as the White House.
As found on their official website here: https://www.secretservice.gov/join/caree...VEQAvD_BwE
The best part about what youre saying is that it is completely wrong. The secret service IRL would respond to calls of money laundering, counterfit production and things like they. Diplomatic protection is more of a secondary and a completley different division. If you have a job named "Sercret Service Agent" let them do all aspects of the jobs that Secret Service do, its not specific enough to limit people to only diplomatic protection. But i guess im wrong because the secret service website says so :shrug:
let's add another 4 cops, who aren't under the control of the chief, with a salary of 2 times the SWAT sgt, who wear suits, whos main job is to go around raiding shit. i can't invision any way that would go wrong. perhaps they can use their presidential limo to drive to the raids.
i think if da ban history reset that will take care of everyones problems
(May 18, 2020, 04:04 PM)Maveric Wrote: [ -> ]The best part about what youre saying is that it is completely wrong. The secret service IRL would respond to calls of money laundering, counterfit production and things like they. Diplomatic protection is more of a secondary and a completley different division. If you have a job named "Sercret Service Agent" let them do all aspects of the jobs that Secret Service do, its not specific enough to limit people to only diplomatic protection. But i guess im wrong because the secret service website says so :shrug:
The USSS on the server is exclusively the presidential protection detail. The president's protection team does not respond to calls like that.
Imo, it's really silly to let them do more than that. I'm not sure if you know the history of the job on the server, but the USSS agents were added specifically to protect the president so SWAT no longer had to. Back in the day many presidents used SWAT / SRU as personal protection. Letting USSS do other jobs negates that purpose entirely.
(May 18, 2020, 05:27 PM)Gmans DAD Wrote: [ -> ]The United States Secret Service is a federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security charged with conducting criminal investigations and protecting the nation's leaders and their families. Until 2003, the Secret Service was part of the Department of the Treasury, as the agency was founded in 1865 to combat the then-widespread counterfeiting of U.S. currency
????
I will reiterate:
I'm not sure if you know the history of the job on the server, but the USSS agents were added
specifically to protect the president so SWAT no longer had to. Back in the day many presidents used SWAT / SRU as personal protection. Letting USSS do other jobs negates that purpose entirely.
https://www.secretservice.gov/protection/
On that same wikipedia article you copy pasted from, note how in the primary missions section
protection comes first.
Quote:
Quote:The Secret Service ensures the safety of the president of the United States, the vice president of the United States, the president's and vice president's immediate families, former presidents, their spouses and their minor children under the age of 16, major presidential and vice-presidential candidates and their spouses, and visiting foreign heads of state. The Secret Service also provides physical security for the White House Complex, the neighboring Treasury Department building, the vice president's residence, and all foreign diplomatic missions in Washington, D.C. The protective mission includes protective operations to coordinate manpower and logistics with state and local law enforcement, protective advances to conduct site and venue assessments for protectees, and protective intelligence to investigate all manners of threats made against protectees. The Secret Service is the lead agency in charge of the planning, coordination, and implementation of security operations for events designated as National Special Security Events (NSSE). As part of the Service's mission of preventing an incident before it occurs, the agency relies on meticulous advance work and threat assessments developed by its Intelligence Division to identify potential risks to protectees.[5]
if it makes you really happy i can change the name to "secret service protective detail agent" but then the acronym gets a little gross
(May 18, 2020, 04:04 PM)Maveric Wrote: [ -> ] (Apr 27, 2020, 08:03 AM)Catfish Wrote: [ -> ]Quick note here, the photograph you have is of the Secret Service Uniformed Division, who is still a protection service, not an active patrolling law enforcement agency that responds to calls and actively polices the public, unless near or on federally protected property such as the White House.
As found on their official website here: https://www.secretservice.gov/join/caree...VEQAvD_BwE
The best part about what youre saying is that it is completely wrong. The secret service IRL would respond to calls of money laundering, counterfit production and things like they. Diplomatic protection is more of a secondary and a completley different division. If you have a job named "Sercret Service Agent" let them do all aspects of the jobs that Secret Service do, its not specific enough to limit people to only diplomatic protection. But i guess im wrong because the secret service website says so :shrug:
Hi,
This post right here was specifically about the Secret Service Uniformed Division. Not regular agents. Please see the previously attached link.