Ok so I finally got back into Gmod RP, but I tried HL2 RP (clockwork system before anyone asks). The server I found was enjoyable, and yet far more barebones than LL. Hell, over the course of a month and a bit I've already amassed well over three hundred hours into this server, and yet it was comparatively featureless and empty compare to peak LL. This got me thinking, what did I enjoy about this server? It has less features. it's capped at 32 players, theoretically I should hate it.
Then I looked at what the lack of features actually did for it. It has a character system, which means permanent deaths if staff reckon it's a proper death (No RDMing ruining your grind), but also means that the few features you can get are designed in a slow fashion so that every item felt like a milestone. You felt like you earned that jacket, that sandwich, looking good took time. This especially applies for criminal aspects, I spent my first week as a rebel stuck without a handgun or a melee weapon, punching zombies in the face. Getting a pistol felt like a fucking blessing, even considering the rarity of ammo. Everything was a milestone, not just "Hey I got my first legitimate million" and moving on with the rest of the day, maybe mentioning in passing to friends.
This serious format also meant people were genuinely scared to lose their guns and weapons, meaning instead of going for "Shoot until dead" like on here, people did /me and /it, rolepayed injuries, retreated instead of going "Oh shit NLR for 10 minutes" and actually, you know, feared for their characters' lives. I actually found myself enjoying combat, instead of sitting behind a 1x20x40 wall and waiting for the gunfire to stop, even if it was slower. The lack of items also meant that people took time to roleplay fistfights, use melee weapons and even just outright de-escalate the situation if it was more costly than 40 minutes of sitting in a room staring at some weed plants.
What I'm saying is that poverty leads to creativity on servers, especially roleplay servers with RPG elements. If you have to fight to supplement your ration, you getting your hands on some illegal whiskey suddenly leaves you with the choice to get kudos with the government, enjoy yourself, or sell it to be able to get something you want more. Scripted dependencies mean that people will become regular customers if they try out a product rather than just being able to sell it to an NPC, and generates an actual player market, rather than some kind of ultra-capitalist crap where one commodity sells for multiple thousands per piece whilst everything else is dirt cheap.
Combine all of this with regular major events, a community which can cultivate amazing roleplay (which I know is definitely possible here), server lore being in control of both the players and staff team, a combination of strict codes of honour for police to avoid killing underground RP and loose server rules to allow for flexible RP, with fair punishment for being a cunt, and you have the recipe for a server that matches the standard of RP found in the more dedicated circle of LL during its hayday (Think the internal RP for WY or the internal stuff that happened with the KYG, or actually much of internal clan politics.)
So how does this apply to LL? Well, for one, and I know it's an unpopular opinion, WIPE THE DAMN ECONOMY. There is quite literally is zero sense in keeping people in that "Winner" state, considering that's what killed the server. People had beaten the game as far as they were concerned, legacy became a market of hoarding instead of flexing, considering you couldn't display all three lambos you owned, and all it led to was people fighting any deflationary efforts with "Fuck you I got mine!" mentalities. I say this not out of envy, I owned multiple different legacy cars and had a net worth of 20 mil at one time, but it's more out of concern. New people were entirely skipping the "Mid-game" of SUVs and fast hatchbacks and managing to go straight for the "late-game" of legacy cars, sports cars and supercars, with "high tier" guns like AWMs, M249s, hell even pistols were made redundant by the economy, never mind melee weapons. People who like "gamey" aspects such as farming, combat and grinding need to be given a fresh start, especially the ones who are sitting on tens of millions in raw cash and hundreds of millions in inventory values, who could literally kill the server with an inventory giveaway.
Next, make it MUCH harder to earn money in the first place, make a new car feel like something you want to show off to everyone, not just something you buy on the market for a single RP and then leave stewing in your inventory for months on end until you retry the RP to earn some REPs.
Speaking of REPs, make sure that they actually reward you. Police mains could enjoy everything they wanted for just 7 REPs, hell if they weren't interested in SWAT uniforms they got everything in 3(!) and then had no other reason to roleplay well. There's something that can be said for only making REPs temporary rewards, such as "why would people go for something that isn't long term?" and "Isn't that punishing inactive people?", which are definitely concerns, but at the same time, how do we counter people reaching a certain level of REPs and just giving up? Another option is, instead of rewarding people with points to use new items, we go for a more restrictive economy that means that the items themselves could be rewards. For example, on HL2 RP servers, a way of rewarding rebels who roleplayed well and took some initiative is for them to find a rare item, such as an AR2 or a combine shotgun. This means that they feel rewarded for being daring or smart, and for spicing up the roleplay and breaking up a cycle, and it also means that they don't feel like they've hit the "end game" because their reward is easily lost if they're stupid.
Now for the part where I lose Theo's favour, but the map makes a massive difference, more than people give credit for but still not the hail mary others treat it as. Maps set the stage, they give inspiration and set a precedent for what people want to do when they first hop onto the server. Dense, city heavy maps like Southside generated ideas of mobsters, close knit communities and rich yuppies all brushing shoulders within meters of each other yet holding such different views on the world. Forested, massive maps like Truenorth generated ideals of hillbillies, long police chases, county sherrifs and the slow gentrification of a town in the middle of bumfuck, nowhere. Mixed maps like Rockford allowed for a variety of these roleplays with not too much whiplash in between settings, with fairly strong blending between the distinct areas. Evocity, on the otherhand, tries too hard to do what Rockford did well but focussing on what made Southside great and largely ignoring the outside, leading to "Oh look, a tree." HOWEVER, no map is perfect, and some kind of clan will be killed no matter what you pick, the USFS was threatened by Southside, mafias struggled to keep into the "organised" section of crime due to the sprawl of Truenorth. What is even worse than killing off one or two clans? Forcing people to ping-pong between clans of different type because you can't choose a map and pay too much heed to people who will whinge whatever the map is. Pick ONE map, stick with it, and stop getting rid of everyone's map specific dupes after 3 months because a vocal group of map flip floppers got whiney again.
This does sound like someone yelling from a distance to some extent, considering I have had no involvement in the server since the pandemic proper started, other than shitposting on the forums a little. However, I still think that people complaining "There's no players" and then saying nothing shows exactly what kind of playerbase is left. The do-ers have packed up and left, leaving those who do nothing but complain to the void called the forums behind.
Limelight was killed by itself, its toxic player report culture leading to people enforcing rules to the extreme just to satiate bloodthirsty groups who, when the RP made them lose out and not come out on top, driving people away for their own egos. We tried to point out particular problem groups and break them up, A37, Crime Buds, Revolver Gang, and called those people the problem, rather than the innate problem with the gamemode itself that created these groups, akin to pointing at the shooting of Franz Ferdinand and calling it the only cause of the Great War instead of looking at the clusterfuck of alliances that led to such a large scale war, and willingly we pulled the wool over our eyes in the face of having to address the cultural and mechanical issues that were killing the server, and pointed to scape goats instead.
The server is dead and we killed it. The only way to revive it is a total restart, systems revamped to accomodate a fresh playerbase, and to tell the old guard to suck it up and stop being so elitist. I'd like to think that's possible, maybe I'm naive.
(Feb 8, 2021, 03:21 AM)Montyfatcat Wrote: [ -> ]Limelight was killed by itself, its toxic player report culture leading to people enforcing rules to the extreme just to satiate bloodthirsty groups who, when the RP made them lose out and not come out on top, driving people away for their own egos. We tried to point out particular problem groups and break them up, A37, Crime Buds, Revolver Gang, and called those people the problem, rather than the innate problem with the gamemode itself that created these groups, akin to pointing at the shooting of Franz Ferdinand and calling it the only cause of the Great War instead of looking at the clusterfuck of alliances that led to such a large scale war, and willingly we pulled the wool over our eyes in the face of having to address the cultural and mechanical issues that were killing the server, and pointed to scape goats instead.
ive.
thanks for the shoutout, don't forget to credit givens for their hard work too!
(Feb 8, 2021, 03:21 AM)Montyfatcat Wrote: [ -> ]The only way to revive it is a total restart, systems revamped to accomodate a fresh playerbase, and to tell the old guard to suck it up and stop being so elitist. I'd like to think that's possible, maybe I'm naive.
Yes ok. Me and hundreds of other players will "suck it up", that thousands of hours of progress are getting deleted.
Yes, very good idea. I will definitely join LimeLight again to play for another 2000+ hours! Fun! Just suck it up xdd
Ima be real now. It has absolutely fucking nothing to do with the "old guard" being "elitist" when I don't want all my stuff and progress to be lost, which I've farmed for hundreds and thousands of hours. Not to forget the real money which I and others payd already. What a stupid idea. Do you think if the devs of CoD Modern Warfare 2 would just delete everyone's stats, players would return? Of fucking course not.
(Feb 8, 2021, 06:35 PM)Seawolf Wrote: [ -> ] (Feb 8, 2021, 03:21 AM)Montyfatcat Wrote: [ -> ]snip
I absolutely agree with all of these points. This server needs a complete hard reset and a major rules and system overhaul to make it fun.
(Feb 8, 2021, 04:06 PM)Nudelsalat im Panzer Wrote: [ -> ] (Feb 8, 2021, 03:21 AM)Montyfatcat Wrote: [ -> ]The only way to revive it is a total restart, systems revamped to accomodate a fresh playerbase, and to tell the old guard to suck it up and stop being so elitist. I'd like to think that's possible, maybe I'm naive.
Yes ok. Me and hundreds of other players will "suck it up", that thousands of hours of progress are getting deleted.
Yes, very good idea. I will definitely join LimeLight again to play for another 2000+ hours! Fun! Just suck it up xdd
Ima be real now. It has absolutely fucking nothing to do with the "old guard" being "elitist" when I don't want all my stuff and progress to be lost, which I've farmed for hundreds and thousands of hours. Not to forget the real money which I and others payd already. What a stupid idea. Do you think if the devs of CoD Modern Warfare 2 would just delete everyone's stats, players would return? Of fucking course not.
Well, since you don't seem to be playing on the server anyway, what is the point of what you are saying? You're not putting the money you paid to use, so why bother being against it? This seems more of a YOU problem than anything.
????????????????????
Basically, no one is playing on the server, so now everyone is "the problem" because they're not playing??
I didn't know that I now can't raise my opinion as I "don't play on the server". Unfortunately, literally, all "ex-players" including staff are not allowed to raise their opinions then, as they are not playing as well. What a silly reason try and make my point invalid. You just avoided the points I've raised entirely.
It is also not a "you"-problem when you basically want to remove everyone's stuff for no reason whatsoever. It's not going to get people back.
But I mean, for a player with a total of 42k in their pocket and a little amount of 400 hours compared to many other people here, it is easy to say "yes let's remove everything xdd haha"
Limelight is a roleplay server, the main focus should be roleplay, not progression. A wipe will only reinforce the ideology that the main goal is progression.
(Feb 8, 2021, 04:06 PM)Nudelsalat im Panzer Wrote: [ -> ] (Feb 8, 2021, 03:21 AM)Montyfatcat Wrote: [ -> ]The only way to revive it is a total restart, systems revamped to accomodate a fresh playerbase, and to tell the old guard to suck it up and stop being so elitist. I'd like to think that's possible, maybe I'm naive.
Yes ok. Me and hundreds of other players will "suck it up", that thousands of hours of progress are getting deleted.
Yes, very good idea. I will definitely join LimeLight again to play for another 2000+ hours! Fun! Just suck it up xdd
Ima be real now. It has absolutely fucking nothing to do with the "old guard" being "elitist" when I don't want all my stuff and progress to be lost, which I've farmed for hundreds and thousands of hours. Not to forget the real money which I and others payd already. What a stupid idea. Do you think if the devs of CoD Modern Warfare 2 would just delete everyone's stats, players would return? Of fucking course not.
Ok so how do you promise fixing the obscene inflation? Because accessories were supposed to do that to some extent, that was why they were so damn expensive, and people whined about it. If any proper cash sink were to be introduced, nothing would happen because people would complain until it got lowered.
The damage has been done to such an extent that anything that could be introduced to fix it short of money slowly draining out of your inventory past a certain point would be absolutely minimal. Increasing market prices will do fuck all, everyone who's got large sums of money are going to have stockpiles coming out of their ears, and that goes for pretty much everything except ammo, which gets used up instead of circulating into various inventories after a fight, or can be brought from the void like fish.
Do you even maintain your account anymore? Do you play when you have that much money? What is there to achieve when you can literally afford any update on the spot, and it'll make a barely visible dent in your bank account? Oh it costs five mil to get all these new cosmetics? Guess I'll just fuckin liquidate some assets and sell one of my five legacy cars of the same make and model!
This idea that people will all together quit if they lose progress shows that for a lot of people so heavily invested in the server, it isn't about enjoyment anymore, if your progress is wiped after you get to the point where there's nothing left to do then you surely would enjoy the fresh start if you actually enjoyed playing the server and its mechanics. Then what's wrong with a restart? Or is it more about maintaining your position at this point?
Because a lot of what I'm hearing is complaints that there's nothing to do when you hit "the top" and then an absolute lack of willingness to restart, to try another tact, challenge yourself to not have to use some item you relied on in the past, use their former connections to try and do something better or more efficiently.
I'm not saying "wipe it and jobs a goodun", I'm saying that a wipe will be a critical part of a total overhaul, something like the full release of MESKA instead of fucking FISHING as the flagship, a total overhaul to how the government works (whitelist perhaps), some kind of system that gets people actually attached to their characters, such as permanent death, and possibly even a rework of the core spaghetti to try and squeeze a few more frames out.
Limelight can't be revived in its current state, it needs to be burnt to the ground and rebuilt from the foundations (gamemode and attachments to the mode), and built for a current, unstagnated playerbase.
As for "no elitism", a huge issue that new people found when coming to the server seemed to be that the "serious" people would often shun new people, mark them off as minges from day one by virtue of being new, which meant that good roleplay potential, the kind that keeps a server alive, was either going elsewhere or treating the server as a "fuck around" place, because the only friendly reception they would receive would be those people labelled minges already.
(Feb 9, 2021, 01:40 AM)Faustin Wrote: [ -> ]Limelight is a roleplay server, the main focus should be roleplay, not progression. A wipe will only reinforce the ideology that the main goal is progression.
Right, but part of roleplay is character progression, and the advantages of using a game is that this progression can become material goods as well as personality, morals and attitude. And, as much of a pain as it can be, let's be realistic here, the gamemode is massively built around progression, the huge hyped up update was going to be RPG elements to encourage progression in a more fun fashion, the main focus was around financial gain, as was the crux of almost every update and overhaul.
I mean... I don't play simply because when i started on Gmod I was 14/15 and at school... Now im rapidly approaching 23 with a career blah blah blah you get the point.
essentially whats happened to me is an endemic problem of much of the team... they grew up, got a job, got into relationships and probably will soon have kids and a mortgage or something. Like many I don't have time for Limelight anymore, its sad to admit but I just have bigger fish to fry and socially other things that demand my attention.
how do we resolve this? well probably a whole new team that can treat it like their full time job is whats needed. Other than that convert LL into a gaming community of likeminded souls and wait for the next big thing to come about to revive our big product.
its been a wild ride but I know how much it costs to run the community and i emplore the staff team not to put their own funds into to keep it alive as I suspect will need to happen soon.
LL was one of the big parts of my life for a long time and I'll genuinely be sad when it goes but everything has its lifecycle and i feel we're in need of more than a plaster on a shotgun wound.
Imagine having a job and a life. DIsgusting.
(Feb 9, 2021, 06:25 PM)roxas Wrote: [ -> ]Imagine having a job and a life. DIsgusting.
I laughed and cried at the same time.
I went through some of my Garry's Mod screenshots recently though and I did miss playing here.
