Suggestion Reassessing Roleplay Etiquette: Metagaming, Metabaiting & IC vs. OOC

[Deleted member 61]

Controversial opinion: there shouldn't be an F3, only /set nickname so you're forced to remember a person by consciously repeating their name in your mind (in a /command).

 

[Komchan]

Controversial opinion: there shouldn't be an F3, only /set nickname so you're forced to remember a person by consciously repeating their name in your mind (in a /command).

issue with that is, it'd make Pming anyone or trying to figure out who's who on an ooc level a complete pain, eg if you wanted to inform them of something quickly etc

 

[Deleted member 374]

There are reasons we can't have nice things.

Human nature and even worse, human nature on the internet.

no, your problem is you lack imagination.

 

[Cindy]

The thing I take issue with in regards to "that's just the RP culture and what people do" is that a community's RP culture doesn't come from nowhere; It's taught and enforced by the rules of that server, the systems of its factions and how characters are made to interact with one another. You change how those work, and the culture will change as well—even if it comes with some growing pains.

So I find myself again asking: What causes or allows people to abuse the ability to know one's character name OOC so much? Is it that character death is far more abundant and PK's are easier to stick? Is it that malicious or ill-intending players are able to get away with metagaming due to insufficient safeguards (such as thorough logging, which Gary has been kind to provide on the player's side as of the latest changelog)? Both? Something else entirely?

@Numbers You said in a thread a few days ago (or maybe yesterday) that you wish Nebulous could handle S2RP. Getting rid of the name recognition system is the first step to making the server capable of handling S2RP scenarios by allowing players to easily communicate with one another.

 

[ovxy]

@Numbers You said in a thread a few days ago (or maybe yesterday) that you wish Nebulous could handle S2RP. Getting rid of the name recognition system is the first step to making the server capable of handling S2RP scenarios by allowing characters to easily communicate with one another.

nebulous can’t handle s2rp not because it lacks the systems to accommodate, but because of player mentality

player-driven s2rp devolves to “/me wins battle by…” 90% of the time (I stole that quote from numbers)

large-scale s2rp is annoying to deal with both as a player and as a staff member, that’s why I despise it
however I do enjoy s2rp with a small group of experienced roleplayers

 

[Rabid]

So I find myself again asking: What causes or allows people to abuse the ability to know one's character name OOC so much? Is it that character death is far more abundant and PK's are easier to stick? Is it that malicious or ill-intending players are able to get away with metagaming due to insufficient safeguards (such as thorough logging, which Gary has been kind to provide on the player's side as of the latest changelog)? Both? Something else entirely?

A lot of the worst habits of the community - particularly metagaming - stemmed originally from a combination of Rebel groups on Lemonpunch circa 2014 realising how powerful it could be to fuck one another over for resources & gain (usually the death of someone they considered an obstacle to get their gear/base/whatever).

A lot of those players were also heavily into WW3, where the rate of such things was far and away worse than on HL2RP. When those people drifted back and settled into RebelRP again those habits came with them - and they were very good at it. Proving it was incredibly difficult, and a lot of those same people continued to play at Neb when it opened.

So basically, same community with same players who've had years and years of the same habits. Even the people who didn't do such things got caught up in it over time simply to not fall victim themselves.

As I said before; whereas Neb's metagame mostly limits itself to the short term, TnB's usually ended in long-term damage when it did happen.

 

[Cindy]

but because of player mentality

Right, but players only think a certain way because that mentality has been enforced or curated by the way other things are handled. That isn't to say you're wrong, because "/me wins battle by..." is sadly a pretty universal thing among some roleplayers, but there are ways to deal with it. Admins can step in and make a judgement call if necessary, you can structure S2RP like how some MMO private servers like Epsilon does oftentimes.

There's better ways than just leaning 100% on S2K combat.

A lot of the worst habits of the community - particularly metagaming - stemmed originally from a combination of Rebel groups on Lemonpunch circa 2014 realising how powerful it could be to fuck one another over for resources & gain (usually the death of someone they considered an obstacle to get their gear/base/whatever).

A lot of those players were also heavily into WW3, where the rate of such things was far and away worse than on HL2RP. When those people drifted back and settled into RebelRP again those habits came with them - and they were very good at it. Proving it was incredibly difficult, and a lot of those same people continued to play at Neb when it opened.

So basically, same community with same players who've had years and years of the same habits. Even the people who didn't do such things got caught up in it over time simply to not fall victim themselves.

As I said before; whereas Neb's metagame mostly limits itself to the short term, TnB's usually ended in long-term damage when it did happen.

There's just a large part of me that absolutely refuses to believe that metagamers can't be caught, no matter how dedicated they are at it. I've caught players metagaming and I've caught admins metagaming—crafty ones who were annoyingly good at covering their tracks. It's annoying as hell and rather involved, but that's a pain I'd prefer to deal with than gridlocking the whole server into being unable to organize and communicate with one another in how they want to RP. Maybe that's me.

Either way, as I said earlier in the thread I still strongly think there are better ways to go about handling some of the systems that force something like name recognition to exist, but the main principle of this suggestion is to overall ease-up on allowing more OOC communications to benefit the IC experience while still scrutinizing the misuse of OOC info. Name recognition, while playing a big part in that, isn't entirely a mandatory system that needs to be removed to achieve that (even if I think it would be to great benefit).

 

[bigdaddyman413]

i hate s2k.

i strictly p2l and gather a group specifically to go melee brawl with ur group for a based screenshot that'll get 8 nebs and i caption it "bushido"

 

[Rabid]

There's just a large part of me that absolutely refuses to believe that metagamers can't be caught, no matter how dedicated they are at it. I've caught players metagaming and I've caught admins metagaming—crafty ones who were annoyingly good at covering their tracks. It's annoying as hell and rather involved, but that's a pain I'd prefer to deal with than gridlocking the whole server into being unable to organize and communicate with one another in how they want to RP. Maybe that's me.

It isn't impossible by any means, don't get me wrong, but the other part of it (less so now, but back in the day) was who was doing it.

You may or may not have seen it yourself but compared to TnB, where shitty behaviour and poor sportsmanship is usually called out universally, that wasn't the case at Neb.

I can't really compare it to TnB in that regard but imagine knowing some of your biggest and most popular players were probably metagaming but you not only had very little proof but banning them without an outright smoking gun (that they never gave) had the very genuine risk of kicking off a cascade of people rallying to their defence and intentionally kicking off drama that could and did implode the forums/community itself for a time (usually on their order via a discord chat or whatever).

Don't get me wrong though, if metagaming was caught and proven then people got nuked 9/10. It was taken seriously. But if you only 'suspected' certain people of it then you were shit out of luck, and most of them had years worth of experience with avoiding retaliation.

I enjoy S2RP more than S2K but its a difficult thing to work with even in the idea cases, I suppose.