Serious Discussion: WW3RP 'back to basics'... sortof

[Roosebud]

I'm going to assume a lot of people don't really keep up with the stuff I answered in previous pages since there's a lot of clutter. I've been asked a lot about the lore, setting etc already and I'm kinda tired of repeating the same answers.

But I'll reply to this since I hope it finally settles some discussions.

I'll break it down into sections so people (hopefully) won't skip through it and ask the same stuff three pages later.

Can I just ask why don't we just go back to how it was, NATO vs Soviet / Globalist vs Coalition, I don't get the 'organized insurgency' set in the 90's part, if anything, it just seems like more complications than anything.

I don't particulary think it's a matter of things getting more complicated, there's nothing that'd really be super complicated in my personal opinion. It's also hard to conclude stuff like that when we haven't even launched/finalized anything.

In any event, the underlying thought is that I don't want yet another "copy/paste factions fighting what is essentially a paintball match" setting, as that has more or less proven to be a main factor behind s2k becoming the norm and rp being pushed out (which is what people have always critized).

By having the Soviet/Warsaw Pact (as its not just russians) be the military faction, you give people the room to play their soldier fantasy in a military structured setting.

By having the opposing side be an organized, yet informal, insurgency/army of sorts you give people the room to play non-standard characters such as mercenaries, freedom fighters, civilian-turned-soldier etc, while also including the NATO element to bring about diversity, balance and the opportunity to play Western army characters.

I feel like that'd bring way more opportunity for diversity, fresh playstyles rather than "you have to be a soldier man behaving like a soldier man", more creative room for events, whatever.

All in all, the working of both factions hasn't been set in stone yet, just that this background would allow for way more as well as provide an additional layer of RP/depth rather than the generic paintball match I mentioned before.

It's like you're trying to join the lore of stasiland with how ww3rp used to be.

I don't really see this, considering the lore of Stasiland is the exact same lore as the 'old' WW3RP we ran before it.

Another thing I'd like to point out is you want to have a 'powerful' faction versus another, I can promise you now that this just is going to cause more hassle than it's worth.

I see this point being made from time to time, so I'd like to emphasize this:

I never said (or meant) that one side would be fundamentally weaker than the other side

What I stated was that the sides would be different in their equipment and gameplay, to keep things diverse and avoid the 'generic paintball match' gameplay I mentioned above.
I named a few examples, such as the insurgency having access to irregular weapons, historical weapons, makeshift vehicles/bombs etc as opposed to two factions carrying standard army gear duking it out. As well as the (small) NATO group being attached to the faction to facilitate some more 'high-tech' features such as surveillance, combat aircraft etc.

That doesn't mean their equipment would be weaker than the other side, ofcourse there's going to be balance in order to make it work. Both sides will still have to buy their equipment from the vendors in similar fashion.

I understand that from your point, you don't want the two factions to be 'red team' vs 'blue team'

Yes, exactly. The 'generic red vs blue paintball match' was one of the root causes people just started doing whatever and complained about a structural lack of rp, simply because that was the atmosphere that it brought forth.

Also as a good few people, myself included have said, the way to recapture the playerbase is going back to the modern setting.

I'm looking for the proper way to word this, but people have consistently been unable to explain to me exactly why this would be the case. I legit don't really see what actual, major difference it would make from what we're doing with the current lore.

We've already developed/taken so much liberties with the lore that we're very close to what people would consider the 'modern lore' in terms of equipment that there's barely any difference gameplay-wise.
The only thing that has routinely come up in those discussions was the inability to incorporate pop-culture and stuff like smartphones into gameplay, but as with LP and early Neb, we had to ban pretty much all of that due to the excessive memes and stupid shit that it caused.

I understand some people in the community are well-versed on their WW2 and Cold War knowledge

That's the thing though, you don't have to have a big understanding of the cold war and WW2 is irrelevant at this point.

I'm pretty sure everyone in the world knows what NATO is and what the Soviet Union was, or at the very least what part of the world it was in and that one side was a threat to the other and vice versa.

All people need to know is that what occured as a 'cold war' IRL turned hot at some point, the lore has since been developed IC so much that it's vastly different from the history books anyways.
If anything I always considered it easier, because you didn't have to explain a shit ton of made-up background info about why there's a war and who the factions are to new players. You can simply say "NATO vs Soviets, Soviets attacked and captured most of Europe" and people would have a relatively firm understanding of what characters they should play (e.g. no americans on the soviets) and get right into it and figure the rest out IC.

it's been tried over and over and it doesn't take a genius to realize the majority of the player-base

You say this a lot, but I honestly have never experienced it as being 'the majority', I reckon one could argue the same (in regards to it being tried over and over) for the modern lore, as it's had just as many iterations. At the end of the day, both versions of the lore never really 'died', they were all ended by decision. Aside from Stasiland, which failed in the end because it didn't focus on the 'easy warfare' part enough.

as it's more relatable.

I never, ever understood this honestly. I want to break this down into multiple things:

(I'll be referencing the modern lore as being coalition vs globalists)

In terms of factions, it's way easier to tell a new player it's NATO vs the Warsaw Pact/Soviet Union, as stated above people will almost immediately have an idea about who to play. In blunt terms, Americans/Westerners go to NATO and Easterners/Communists etc go to the Soviet Union. NATO still exists to day, and even without knowledge of history the Soviet Union has been so ingrained in modern culture/the internet that most people know what it is.

Compare that to the "Unified Globalist Agenda" and the "Coalition of Independent Nations" and it already takes a lot more effort to explain to people what they're supposed to play.
Both factions would never exist in real life and consist of entirely fictional lore. This was also the main reason the lore and characters were often really bloated and unrealistic, especially the russians/communists playing UGA characters and the American patriots in the Coalition, simply an aftereffect of people not knowing/bothering what they're supposed to do and just shrugging and doing whatever.

Now, I can understand the link to a modern variant such as NATO vs CSAT/Russian Federation or w/e. But then again, what would really be different from the current setting, aside from the referencing pop culture or real events (which would likely need changing lore-wise anyways). And would it really be worth the effort of changing for a relatively low return?

I've heard people say they're 'unable to identify with a soldier in the 90s'. But how does this hold up compared to a soldier in the near future, fighting a world war in a completely fictionalized setting? I'd personally say both are very unrelatable. The only thing that, once again, comes to mind is the inability to reference pop culture or utilize more modern interactions. Then again, I can probably name countless instances of that already happening in the current lore, people using modern slang etc for example.

And we're not too strict on that for obvious reasons, and that's fine. Which again brings about the question of 'why does it this need to change so badly'. We wouldn't be changing any of the weapons, we'd probably still be working with an east vs west scenario and we'd probably have to ban a lot of 'modern' stuff such as phones, memes etc.

@Clokr brought up the counter-argument that it would be too political, but that's why we made the 'Globalist' and 'Coalition' in the first place, simulated modern-era, not realistic modern-era.

If anything, from my perspective, the absence of politicalness and distinctive idealogies/factions reinforced the 'generic paintball match' approach a lot of players took, which is something we want to avoid in order to prevent another toxic deathmatch gamemode.

I've basically played every iteration of WW3RP, not once was there ever a thread saying 'Can we not play modern-era'. I don't know why it was changed, but nevertheless it was, not much we can do now.

Every lore-switch that was made regarding the cold war setting was welcomed with a lot of postive response, I'm totally open to discussion on the topic of lore, but let's not resort to stuff like 'nobody wanted this' when it doesn't really hold up.

From what I vaguely remember, I was told that, long story short all the weapons and config for the old-lore was basically binned. I don't know if that's true, if it is, that was pretty stupid, but it doesn't mean we can't learn from our mistakes.

I don't really know what you mean by this. If you mean the clockwork-era stuff is gone, that's not really true, but we wouldn't ever use it again simply because clockwork code isn't compatible with Helix.

Also the counter-argument that "it's too much effort to make a new lore and everything" doesn't really hold suit to be honest, as the lore's we're talking about going back to were binned without a second thought.

I'd love to answer this, but I really have no idea what you're trying to say. Could you clarify?

All in all, you had a working system, tried something different and it didn't go to plan, you've clearly thought about ww3 and how it was, and realized the possibility of it coming back more how it used to be. Time to go back to the working system. It's not a personal dig at anyone's ideals, or how they feel the server should be, it's just my opinion.

Both the modern lore and the cold war 'worked', both of them only 'died' when the decision was made to close it down. Stasiland didn't work because it put too much focus on RP / investment in order to engage in combat, which is what a lot of people came for regardless of lore.

The 'working system' as you name it turned out to be the faction vs faction combat with easy access to factions and weapons, which is what is being proposed here, just with some added touches of diversity that don't affect the core gameplay.

I feel like continuing the cold war lore (as we developed it over the years) gives us;

-Easier to understand factions and context, especially for new players or those that dont want to read tons of lore threads.
-A close-to-modern setting that provides us with all the necessary stuff from the modern era (combat vehicles, assault rifles, even drones etc) while leaving out the things that went wrong such as smartphones, 'snapchat'-esque meme stuff, unserious pop-culture and internet references, all of which we'd probably have to ban/alt-history anyways.
-Won't drown us out amongst the various 'US Army vs Russia/China' darkrp servers
-Continues the unique setting which we've built together over the previous couple of years

And probably the most important one in regard to actually getting a server up (as I've stated before):

It's all already coded and built, and I simply don't have the time/motivation to re-do all of it if I can't see the overwhelming benefit and extras of changing it.

In all honesty, it's pretty obvious a lot of people barely care about the lore/setting of a faction v faction server at all, which is fine to some degree as long as it's not ruined for the rest.

 

[The Catastrophe Maker]

Can I just ask why don't we just go back to how it was, NATO vs Soviet / Globalist vs Coalition

+1

if it aint broke and it's worked well, don't fix it

you could try to improve it, but it predisposes one to the risk of making something that'd worked well fail

 

[Deleted member 1381]

The first time I joined WW3 all those years ago it lasted a few minutes at most. I made a globalist character, saw about 4 people around a campfire taking snapchats with anime filters, and left. It's only when I gave it a second try and saw that the other faction didn't have that sort of shit that I kept playing.

There's next to no difference between having a modern setting and an early-mid 90s setting, aside from people being able to effortlessly make self-inserts, or make cheap political and pop culture quips. Either that or the people vouching for it have such a tenacious nostalgia of the globs/coals setting they experienced as a kid that they physically cannot begin to consider that any other setting can match or surpass it. From what I remember during my time on the modern setting there was next to no difference in gameplay aside from weapon reskins and the ability to say damn daniel to the local military policeman. The lore was a clusterfuck and gametracker was the only priority. Nostalgia is the only thing that keeps certain people pushing for the modern lore, but they just don't seem to understand that you're not going to have the same experience now as you did when you were 13 no matter how hard you try and make it happen.

 

[The Catastrophe Maker]

Nostalgia is the only thing that keeps certain people pushing for the modern lore, they just don't seem to understand that you're not going to have the same experience now as you did when you were 13 no matter how hard you try.

it's not about re-experiencing something as it once was; it's about knowing from past experience that a primary formula worked well. after all, if it worked well before, why can't it work well again?

now, in the case of modern lore, that's a detail that's probably inessential. such details don't matter much, so i'm neither for nor against it

 

[Roosebud]

it's not about re-experiencing something as it once was; it's about knowing from past experience that a primary formula worked well. after all, if it worked well before, why can't it work well again?

Honestly? Because the cold war setting worked just as well as the modern one, just with the pros and cons mentioned in my post. The only thing that didnt work was straying away from the faction v faction easy combat setting.

It's like I said, I just dont see the massive benefit of having the date say "2020" instead of "1995" if we already use all the 'modern' stuff equipment-wise

 

[The Catastrophe Maker]

Honestly? Because the cold war setting worked just as well as the modern one, just with the pros and cons mentioned in my post. The only thing that didnt work was straying away from the faction v faction easy combat setting.

It's like I said, I just dont see the massive benefit of having the date say "2020" instead of "1995" if we already use all the 'modern' stuff equipment-wise

i've edited my answer. as i said in my edit, dates are most probably an inconsequential detail and do not matter much

 

[Deleted member 1381]

it's not about re-experiencing something as it once was; it's about knowing from past experience that a primary formula worked well. after all, if it worked well before, why can't it work well again?

I would bank that most of the people who comprised the playercount of the coal/globs lore have either grown up or moved onto other games. If people are so hellbent on focusing on a modern setting from a technological perspective, they'll get their kicks over at Arma much more than they will a gmod server. The only 'upside' to WW3 being set in the modern period would be that it lets people fuck around essentially without limitation, something which they can't do on most other games as they are much stricter on actual milsimming. WW3 offers a unique experience where you don't have to be reciting the phonetic alphabet in your sleep and can have a more lax experience while still retaining seriousness. You can say it worked, but it's the same as saying a swimming pool covered in stagnant scum still works. You can swim in it, but nobody wants to anymore.

The Cold War setting does work well from a WW3 perspective, I just don't think the modern setting offers anything more than reskins on some weapons and the ability to make references to current events regardless of retconning.

 

[Jello]

In any event, the underlying thought is that I don't want yet another "copy/paste factions fighting what is essentially a paintball match" setting, as that has more or less proven to be a main factor behind s2k becoming the norm and rp being pushed out (which is what people have always critized).

Isn't that direction you're trying to push WW3RP again once more? You've gone from a heavily s2k based system, switched it for a heavily rp based one, and the entire premise of this thread is talking about bringing back the old system (s2k) once more.

By having the Soviet/Warsaw Pact (as its not just russians) be the military faction, you give people the room to play their soldier fantasy in a military structured setting.

To be honest I don't even know what you mean by giving people the room to play their soldier fantasy. I don't think people really care that much about the nationality of the character they're roleplaying, or atleast not what I've seen through my previous experiences with the gamemode.

By having the opposing side be an organized, yet informal, insurgency/army of sorts you give people the room to play non-standard characters such as mercenaries, freedom fighters, civilian-turned-soldier etc, while also including the NATO element to bring about diversity, balance and the opportunity to play Western army characters.

I feel like that'd bring way more opportunity for diversity, fresh playstyles rather than "you have to be a soldier man behaving like a soldier man", more creative room for events, whatever.

All in all, the working of both factions hasn't been set in stone yet, just that this background would allow for way more as well as provide an additional layer of RP/depth rather than the generic paintball match I mentioned before.

Haven't we done this before, or at least things like it. We've had things like the Penal Batallion, and I won't even get started on that, cause we all know how it turned out. People can write their backstory whatever way they like. I don't know if you're just explaining it really weirdly, or if the faction is just going to be really scuffed and disorganized. When you talk about insurgents, civilian turned insurgents, are you meerly refering to their backstory; or are you saying these transitions should be IC things, cause then you leave the door open for civilians to be RDM'd by the other faction for hanging around the insurgent faction. I also think it's wishful thinking, that the unique backstories will create much of a change, there's not going to be a total change in gameplay, nor playstyles. People are still going to grab a gun and go out and shoot people, only difference is there might be more multi-lingual people in the faction.

I don't really see this, considering the lore of Stasiland is the exact same lore as the 'old' WW3RP we ran before it.

No but in regards to the civilian aspect, and you wanting it to be disorganized and such, I think it's fair to say there were a few militia groups on stasiland that choose to side with one faction over the other, it just seems like you're forcing the civilian aspect into the factions needlessly.

What I stated was that the sides would be different in their equipment and gameplay, to keep things diverse and avoid the 'generic paintball match' gameplay I mentioned above.
I named a few examples, such as the insurgency having access to irregular weapons, historical weapons, makeshift vehicles/bombs etc as opposed to two factions carrying standard army gear duking it out. As well as the (small) NATO group being attached to the faction to facilitate some more 'high-tech' features such as surveillance, combat aircraft etc.

That doesn't mean their equipment would be weaker than the other side, ofcourse there's going to be balance in order to make it work. Both sides will still have to buy their equipment from the vendors in similar fashion.

I remember a few years back we had developers changing codes of weapons entirely so that they would be, level to level balanced. People liked the paintball match, playing with weapons they knew. I can only speak for myself but I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way, I don't particularly want to use old weapons, I don't want to use PPSH's, I'd much rather use modern weapons, AN-94's, MP5K's, M4A1 carbines, but those guns weren't used in stasiland, and going off what you're saying, i.e, transferring the files over, ready to go, I don't want to use half the weapons that have been coded in.

Yes, exactly. The 'generic red vs blue paintball match' was one of the root causes people just started doing whatever and complained about a structural lack of rp, simply because that was the atmosphere that it brought forth.

First of all, I'm fairly sure people liked the red vs blue match, that was the entire fun of the server, both sides were balanced and it was fun. I don't agree with you that by having two teams equally matched that killed rp, that literally makes no sense, and that's correlation does not imply causation.

That's the thing though, you don't have to have a big understanding of the cold war and WW2 is irrelevant at this point.

I'm pretty sure everyone in the world knows what NATO is and what the Soviet Union was, or at the very least what part of the world it was in and that one side was a threat to the other and vice versa.

All people need to know is that what occured as a 'cold war' IRL turned hot at some point, the lore has since been developed IC so much that it's vastly different from the history books anyways.
If anything I always considered it easier, because you didn't have to explain a shit ton of made-up background info about why there's a war and who the factions are to new players. You can simply say "NATO vs Soviets, Soviets attacked and captured most of Europe" and people would have a relatively firm understanding of what characters they should play (e.g. no americans on the soviets) and get right into it and figure the rest out IC.

I didn't say I didn't understand the lore, I'm saying I understand that people in the community have degrees and historically specialize in that part of history. My point was that it shouldn't be taken as a personal blow to move off of it, and it was only due to these people that we went to that lore in the first place.

I'm looking for the proper way to word this, but people have consistently been unable to explain to me exactly why this would be the case. I legit don't really see what actual, major difference it would make from what we're doing with the current lore.

We've already developed/taken so much liberties with the lore that we're very close to what people would consider the 'modern lore' in terms of equipment that there's barely any difference gameplay-wise.
The only thing that has routinely come up in those discussions was the inability to incorporate pop-culture and stuff like smartphones into gameplay, but as with LP and early Neb, we had to ban pretty much all of that due to the excessive memes and stupid shit that it caused.

I've heard people say they're 'unable to identify with a soldier in the 90s'. But how does this hold up compared to a soldier in the near future, fighting a world war in a completely fictionalized setting? I'd personally say both are very unrelatable. The only thing that, once again, comes to mind is the inability to reference pop culture or utilize more modern interactions. Then again, I can probably name countless instances of that already happening in the current lore, people using modern slang etc for example.

And we're not too strict on that for obvious reasons, and that's fine. Which again brings about the question of 'why does it this need to change so badly'. We wouldn't be changing any of the weapons, we'd probably still be working with an east vs west scenario and we'd probably have to ban a lot of 'modern' stuff such as phones, memes etc.

The same could be said when you changed the lore to the 90's though, no? There was no actual major difference, it didn't change anything but you did it anyway, because that's what you thought would have been best. Also, of course it would be easier for someone to relate to a modern soldier as opposed to one thirty years ago, I never presented the idea that we should go anywhere into the future, that's not what I said. I'm just saying I want to use modern equipment, not ultra-modern, like drones and stuff but modern helis, modern tanks, modern infantry transport vehicles. I don't want to be stuck 30 years ago when I literally wasn't alive, of course I can't relate to that.

If anything, from my perspective, the absence of politicalness and distinctive idealogies/factions reinforced the 'generic paintball match' approach a lot of players took, which is something we want to avoid in order to prevent another toxic deathmatch gamemode.

From my last, seven years or whatever I've been around WW3RP, I've never seen anyone get into an in character political debate about anything. The cold harsh truth is people don't really particularly care that much about the politics of the lore, they're just there to shoot things and have fun.

You say this a lot, but I honestly have never experienced it as being 'the majority', I reckon one could argue the same (in regards to it being tried over and over) for the modern lore, as it's had just as many iterations. At the end of the day, both versions of the lore never really 'died', they were all ended by decision. Aside from Stasiland, which failed in the end because it didn't focus on the 'easy warfare' part enough.

As I said, thinking back I can't even remember why you decided to discontinue the other lores. I remember one of them ended on the korea map during an event suddenly, and then I can't even remember what the other one was over. Also, WW3RP has been around since 2012 or 2013, @Hudson has perspectives from people at the time, there's always been interest in WW3, and there probably will continue to be, hence why this thread was made in the first place.

In terms of factions, it's way easier to tell a new player it's NATO vs the Warsaw Pact/Soviet Union, as stated above people will almost immediately have an idea about who to play. In blunt terms, Americans/Westerners go to NATO and Easterners/Communists etc go to the Soviet Union. NATO still exists to day, and even without knowledge of history the Soviet Union has been so ingrained in modern culture/the internet that most people know what it is.

Compare that to the "Unified Globalist Agenda" and the "Coalition of Independent Nations" and it already takes a lot more effort to explain to people what they're supposed to play.
Both factions would never exist in real life and consist of entirely fictional lore. This was also the main reason the lore and characters were often really bloated and unrealistic, especially the russians/communists playing UGA characters and the American patriots in the Coalition, simply an aftereffect of people not knowing/bothering what they're supposed to do and just shrugging and doing whatever.

Now, I can understand the link to a modern variant such as NATO vs CSAT/Russian Federation or w/e. But then again, what would really be different from the current setting, aside from the referencing pop culture or real events (which would likely need changing lore-wise anyways). And would it really be worth the effort of changing for a relatively low return?

If we can use modern-ish equipment, alongside modern-ish guns on 'new looking maps' (evo city for example) I could care less about the lore, or what year the lore is set in. I'd much rather be in a 2014 lore using the weapons, and in modern uniforms but that isn't up to me.
But I don't want it to be a case where I'm shooting a piece of tinfoil because 'meh we are stuck 30 years in the past and X gun isn't out yet'. I don't want the modern lore so I can kill someone and do "/me takes a picture of the dead glob and posts it on his snapchat story", that's retarded, and I've never done that.

Every lore-switch that was made regarding the cold war setting was welcomed with a lot of postive response, I'm totally open to discussion on the topic of lore, but let's not resort to stuff like 'nobody wanted this' when it doesn't really hold up.

The lore wasn't broken but yet it was changed anyway. No one asked for it to be changed and there was never a thread asking for it to be changed. I'd urge you to have a public poll, or simply allow ask people which they'd prefer; about which lore people would prefer, or which weapons people would prefer to use, AN-94 vs PPSH. A poll on which they could relate more to.

I'd love to answer this, but I really have no idea what you're trying to say. Could you clarify?

Previous iterations of the lore have been thrown in the bin overnight. So to hold this 90's lore on such a high pedestal is a bit weird. As I said earlier, I know people in the community specialize in this time in history, but it's strange to hold it so high, when other lores were binned.

The 'working system' as you name it turned out to be the faction vs faction combat with easy access to factions and weapons, which is what is being proposed here, just with some added touches of diversity that don't affect the core gameplay.

I feel like continuing the cold war lore (as we developed it over the years) gives us;

-Easier to understand factions and context, especially for new players or those that dont want to read tons of lore threads.
-A close-to-modern setting that provides us with all the necessary stuff from the modern era (combat vehicles, assault rifles, even drones etc) while leaving out the things that went wrong such as smartphones, 'snapchat'-esque meme stuff, unserious pop-culture and internet references, all of which we'd probably have to ban/alt-history anyways.
-Won't drown us out amongst the various 'US Army vs Russia/China' darkrp servers
-Continues the unique setting which we've built together over the previous couple of years

And probably the most important one in regard to actually getting a server up (as I've stated before):

It's all already coded and built, and I simply don't have the time/motivation to re-do all of it if I can't see the overwhelming benefit and extras of changing it.

In all honesty, it's pretty obvious a lot of people barely care about the lore/setting of a faction v faction server at all, which is fine to some degree as long as it's not ruined for the rest.

While I'd disagree that it's easier to tell a new player about 90's lore compared to modern lore, as I said earlier, as long as modern weapons, equipment, modern-looking maps can be used, grapple gear et cetera, than I could care less. I'm not trying to bring back the modern lore for 'le epic meme' so I can open snapchat on my rp phone, I just feel it was much easier to relate to. And yeah your last sentence basically sums up what I said earlier, harsh truth is that people don't really care about the lore.
I just don't want the case where when something is proposed and the counter argument "but we're in the 90's" is used.

The first time I joined WW3 all those years ago it lasted a few minutes at most. I made a globalist character, saw about 4 people around a campfire taking snapchats with anime filters, and left. It's only when I gave it a second try and saw that the other faction didn't have that sort of shit that I kept playing.

That's not what it was like at all though. There's tons of people here who were around during the 2014-2016 era who will tell you this barely ever happened. And it shouldn't have been happening, just bring a rule in ICly where all phones are banned, simple.

 

[The Catastrophe Maker]

The Cold War setting does work well from a WW3 perspective, I just don't think the modern setting offers anything more than reskins on some weapons and the ability to make references to current events regardless of retconning.

agreed. dates don't really matter much

 

[Deleted member 1381]

That's not what it was like at all though. There's tons of people here who were around during the 2014-2016 era who will tell you this barely ever happened. And it shouldn't have been happening, just bring a rule in ICly where all phones are banned, simple.

I had almost identical experiences every time I tried to play on the globalist faction, which is why my loyalty was cemented to coalition until the new lore.

I still haven't seen a convincing argument as to why we should be in the modern setting. All that would follow is weapon and vehicle reskins and the continuation of a fractured lore that still confuses me five years down the line.

 

[Roosebud]

Isn't that direction you're trying to push WW3RP again once more? You've gone from a heavily s2k based system, switched it for a heavily rp based one, and the entire premise of this thread is talking about bringing back the old system (s2k) once more.

Yes, because that's the 'working system' as you called it. I'm just trying to stay away from the copy-pasted factions red vs blue team as much as possible without sacrificing the faction v faction combat.

To be honest I don't even know what you mean by giving people the room to play their soldier fantasy. I don't think people really care that much about the nationality of the character they're roleplaying, or atleast not what I've seen through my previous experiences with the gamemode.

Okay? What I meant was that people who want to do the militaryRP can join the army faction and the ones that prefer different characters can join the 'insurgent' faction while still being able to do combat the way it's always worked.

I don't really know if you misunderstood me or we're talking about different things. If people don't really care about their character origins and cause to begin with, we wouldn't really need this discussion about lore etc.

Haven't we done this before, or at least things like it. We've had things like the Penal Batallion, and I won't even get started on that, cause we all know how it turned out. People can write their backstory whatever way they like. I don't know if you're just explaining it really weirdly, or if the faction is just going to be really scuffed and disorganized. When you talk about insurgents, civilian turned insurgents, are you meerly refering to their backstory; or are you saying these transitions should be IC things, cause then you leave the door open for civilians to be RDM'd by the other faction for hanging around the insurgent faction. I also think it's wishful thinking, that the unique backstories will create much of a change, there's not going to be a total change in gameplay, nor playstyles. People are still going to grab a gun and go out and shoot people, only difference is there might be more multi-lingual people in the faction.

I feel like I'm going in loops here to be honest. Did you read the OP and the discussion that followed?

We established that people dont want to invest in 'IC becoming an insurgent', which is the reason we're now proposing just making it a full-fledged faction with vendor acces and no whitelist etc.

We've yet to establish the full-scope of differences between the factions, but obviously we're trying to avoid shit that would upset the balance a lot. One of the main differences would simply be you're not part of an official army, meaning you dont need a military background for your character and you likely wouldn't have much stuff such as ranks and hierarchy aside from the main leadership positions.

All in all, even if you're correct about the 'RP freedom' meaning jack shit, imo it's still better than just two copy/paste factions with next to no difference.

No but in regards to the civilian aspect, and you wanting it to be disorganized and such, I think it's fair to say there were a few militia groups on stasiland that choose to side with one faction over the other, it just seems like you're forcing the civilian aspect into the factions needlessly.

I honestly just feel like you're either misunderstanding or misinterpreting certain concepts. You'd still be a soldier all the same, with the same access to guns (albeit different guns), except you're not a career soldier (meaning it doesnt follow the same hierarchy and is more informally structured IC) and the faction doesn't put the same restrictions on your characters from an RP perspective.

Hell, if it's really that much of a problem for people for some reason, we can easily just call it the "XX Liberation Army" or whatever and give people ranks anyways. I just feel like something other than modern army vs modern army with identical structures will lead to the same old generic paintball match.

I remember a few years back we had developers changing codes of weapons entirely so that they would be, level to level balanced. People liked the paintball match, playing with weapons they knew. I can only speak for myself but I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way, I don't particularly want to use old weapons, I don't want to use PPSH's, I'd much rather use modern weapons, AN-94's, MP5K's, M4A1 carbines, but those guns weren't used in stasiland, and going off what you're saying, i.e, transferring the files over, ready to go, I don't want to use half the weapons that have been coded in.

We copy-pasted all the weapon stats because people grew petty enough to 'call out' staff for making the server unfair because weapon A had 0,05% less range compared to weapon B. That's what it got down to because there was nothing else going on since both sides were completely identical in every aspect. I don't particulary feel like that's fun or interesting, and all it does is make people's competitiveness and s2k skill the only variable thing on the server, which isn't a good thing.

First of all, I'm fairly sure people liked the red vs blue match, that was the entire fun of the server, both sides were balanced and it was fun. I don't agree with you that by having two teams equally matched that killed rp, that literally makes no sense, and that's correlation does not imply causation.

What I mean is stated above. Making everything identical was a mistake in my book since it put the focus on the s2k skill and getting kills to come out on top, maybe that's fun for some (note the people that stated they got most of their fun from shitting on the other faction) but it doesn't contribute to a healthy playing environment.

I didn't say I didn't understand the lore, I'm saying I understand that people in the community have degrees and historically specialize in that part of history. My point was that it shouldn't be taken as a personal blow to move off of it, and it was only due to these people that we went to that lore in the first place.

I took it as people not understanding the lore because they dont interest themselves in history, as some people have said. Sure, that's correct, but I tried to point out that you don't have to understand the lore to make a good start on the server, as opposed to the really bloated and confusing lore that was drafted up for the globs/coals stuff.

The same could be said when you changed the lore to the 90's though, no? There was no actual major difference, it didn't change anything but you did it anyway, because that's what you thought would have been best. Also, of course it would be easier for someone to relate to a modern soldier as opposed to one thirty years ago, I never presented the idea that we should go anywhere into the future, that's not what I said. I'm just saying I want to use modern equipment, not ultra-modern, like drones and stuff but modern helis, modern tanks, modern infantry transport vehicles. I don't want to be stuck 30 years ago when I literally wasn't alive, of course I can't relate to that.

I guess what I've been asking time and time again is why it needs to be changed now, while we have a player-built lore, a working and detailed schema and essentially all the modern-day equipment you mentioned.


Edit: Also, I feel like I have to mention that I've always made big decision moments public with polls and everything, since you (unknowingly or not) like to use phrases like "YOU did this" etc. The lore change pitch for the old nebulous WW3RP had these results, otherwise we wouldn't have done it:

(The title was changed to 'official lore' after it was accepted and completed)

From my last, seven years or whatever I've been around WW3RP, I've never seen anyone get into an in character political debate about anything. The cold harsh truth is people don't really particularly care that much about the politics of the lore, they're just there to shoot things and have fun.

Okay, and that's fine. The political point was brought up as a pro for introducing the coals vs globs though, as in keeping the server politically neutral. If people don't really care about it, that point wouldn't really matter anyways so I guess that's settled.

As I said, thinking back I can't even remember why you decided to discontinue the other lores. I remember one of them ended on the korea map during an event suddenly, and then I can't even remember what the other one was over. Also, WW3RP has been around since 2012 or 2013, @Hudson has perspectives from people at the time, there's always been interest in WW3, and there probably will continue to be, hence why this thread was made in the first place.

I think you're referring to the last version that had the classic faction v faction concept, we didn't discontinue the lore per se, we just closed the server because of a variety of factors, including most of the senior staff being unable/unwilling to continue, me personally having no time, the atmosphere on the server being downright hostile and the playercount having one of those periodical dips that was hard to recover from, off the top of my head. I don't really feel like digging up all the threads on it.

If we can use modern-ish equipment, alongside modern-ish guns on 'new looking maps' (evo city for example) I could care less about the lore, or what year the lore is set in. I'd much rather be in a 2014 lore using the weapons, and in modern uniforms but that isn't up to me.
But I don't want it to be a case where I'm shooting a piece of tinfoil because 'meh we are stuck 30 years in the past and X gun isn't out yet'. I don't want the modern lore so I can kill someone and do "/me takes a picture of the dead glob and posts it on his snapchat story", that's retarded, and I've never done that.

Okay, but you played on Stasiland right? That means you saw us using modern(ish) weapons, vehicles and other equipment.

The lore wasn't broken but yet it was changed anyway. No one asked for it to be changed and there was never a thread asking for it to be changed. I'd urge you to have a public poll, or simply allow ask people which they'd prefer; about which lore people would prefer, or which weapons people would prefer to use, AN-94 vs PPSH. A poll on which they could relate more to.

It's not 'ppsh vs an-94' and you know that, you saw the weapons that were on the server. That's always gonna be a debate about personal preference, we had coalition players ask for mosin nagants as main weapons since they liked bolt actions in the modern lore and vice versa.

Previous iterations of the lore have been thrown in the bin overnight. So to hold this 90's lore on such a high pedestal is a bit weird. As I said earlier, I know people in the community specialize in this time in history, but it's strange to hold it so high, when other lores were binned.

The only 'lores' we had as far as Ive experienced were the cold war setting that started in 1983 and progressed almost two decades since then, and the coalition vs globalists one which was eventually changed because it became incredibly bloated, hard to explain to new players and people just did whatever since they too couldn't tell what the lore really was.

While I'd disagree that it's easier to tell a new player about 90's lore compared to modern lore, as I said earlier, as long as modern weapons, equipment, modern-looking maps can be used, grapple gear et cetera, than I could care less. I'm not trying to bring back the modern lore for 'le epic meme' so I can open snapchat on my rp phone, I just feel it was much easier to relate to. And yeah your last sentence basically sums up what I said earlier, harsh truth is that people don't really care about the lore.
I just don't want the case where when something is proposed and the counter argument "but we're in the 90's" is used.

I don't really recall every denying something flat-out because 'its the 90s', there's always some concept or middle ground that can be covered, e.g. certain weapons, drones etc. We're currently so close to the modern age that almost everything aside from stuff like smartphones is imaginable in some way.

I personally think grappling gear was a bit of a mistake, since it limited maps to choose from and turned the entire combat meta into getting on high spots and sniping, that and soldier 'parcouring' by sprinting and spamming grapple everywhere. But specific discussions about equipment etc doesn't have to affect the lore, as grapples etc were a thing even back in the 40s.

That's not what it was like at all though. There's tons of people here who were around during the 2014-2016 era who will tell you this barely ever happened. And it shouldn't have been happening, just bring a rule in ICly where all phones are banned, simple.

Yeah and that's fine, and would likely be what would happen.

But all in all I'm still missing the urgency of scrapping everything right now to advance the date a couple of years, when it wouldn't particulary affect the weapons, vehicles and equipment in any significant way.


Edit: and please remember that I pitched this idea with the alternative faction as a concept, not an announcement. That's why there's a poll above.

 

[Chromesthesia_]

i dont know much about the 80's / 90 's other than the doors were cool and i will die from nukes or not idk my wife left me and jfk was shot at some point along with a whole bunch of people i probably didnt care about and oh shit looks like we got smore fuckin music thats wicked as hell i miss my wife

 

[Goopy]

i just wanna go back to an old map no large than a volkswagens kombi interior where headshots are turned off and you can throw grenades from base to base

 

[echs dee]

homemade gun meta

 

[Inaudible™]

Hear me out.
WW3rp but it's combine vs rebels

 

[dvn]

Hear me out.
WW3rp but it's combine vs rebels

idk how to tell you this chief

 

[Roosebud]

Hear me out.
WW3rp but it's combine vs rebels

Some other community is already doing that. I don’t think it would be a very good ‘alternative’ to our HL2RP server.

 

[Jello]

I think it's also worth noting that there was a severe lack of S2K events over the last few months during the old iteration of WW3. It's pretty clear S2K events were a big fueling factor for the server, and while I'm not saying they should be scheduled, cause then they'll get very boring very quickly, depending on the holidays and stuff we should aim to have one at least once or twice a month, just to keep players coming in and experiencing it again.

 

[Deleted member 243]

Roosebud, how high is the probability that we'll realize your concept and will be playing it?

 

[echs dee]

Roosebud, how high is the probability that we'll realize your concept and will be playing it?

50% same with stasiland
70-100 players for like 3 days
"wow server so cool!" then they completely abandon the server
after the server closes
"feel like shit i just want muh ww3rp back waaah"

lets hope the s2k focus doesnt make that happen