Roosebud
Molecule
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- Apr 26, 2016
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The people that know me personally probably know that I'm a super chaotic yet focused individual, as such I often feel like writing down a whole bunch of shit that's been sitting on some dusty shelf in the back of my head.
Just felt like noting down a bunch of observations and conclusions I made during the twilight hours of the last WW3RP iteration. As well as properly make public what I intended to do with stasiland further down the line.
Disclaimer though, this thread will mostly highlight the negative aspects, that doesn't mean we didn't have a fuckton of good times :grinning:
I. Reasons for untimely demise from a roosebudian point-of-view
As I see it, the main reason for the untimely end of the server was a large mix of various smaller reasons. Rather than drag it out into one big chunk of text, I prefer to break down my point of view in various smaller portions, with each being focused on a specific (in my opinion) issue.
Do note that all of this was written from my own point of view, as such it is all an opinion based on my own experiences and observations. Feel free to disagree, discuss or ignore (since I'm sorta known for writing essays nobody reads).
I.0 The long, long brainstorm
To properly understand how the idea of Stasiland first took form, you have to imagine the context of the situation at the time. The first draft of the Stasiland idea was made while WW3RP was still ongoing, we've had several threads/brainstorms on the topic of the mixture of lore, roleplay and s2k.
At this point the server frequently had to deal with periods of low playercounts and periodical threads about how 'there's no rp' or 'people only s2k', something which was universally bashed except by the ones solely playing it to kill the other team.
Due to a variety of reasons, including my personal life, the state of the then-server, the state of the then-playerbase and the sentiment amongst the staff, the WW3RP server was closed down. And we all know how the ending events went, ironically showing what the server had come to for the last time.
The general sentiment after a few discussions (both internally within the staff team and with the players) was that, if WW3RP was to come back (which everyone more or less hinted at every now and then) we'd have to come with reforms based on the discussions and issues everyone pointed out back when the server was up.
The brainstorm that followed was very long and done entirely part-time, seeing as I was still very much occupied at work and we didn't have a properly clear idea of 'what to do'. What it eventually boiled down to were the following core points retrieved from the dozens of discussion threads we had:
A) Better focus on RP while still including a higher sense of violence / conflict
B) Incorporating the player-built lore we accumulated throughout the years of Cold War WW3RP throughout LP and Neb
C) A more unique style of gameplay compared to the eternal spawn-> vendor-> patrol-> fight your clones with a different name cycle
D) More gritty, unforgiving and 'hardcore' compared to the arcadey gameplay of 'classic' WW3RP, including less generic deaths and more PKs/consequences
First concepts of Stasiland were more focused on the 'spin-off' idea, taking place far away from the battlefields we had already visited. However, we decided it'd be more fun for players to interact with a direct continuation of the events of WW3RP. At some point we even touched concepts that were set in modern-day alternate Russia or concepts that were more akin to your typical CityRP server.
Eventually, after going through various variations, we arrived at the would-be final concept of a war-torn state in the middle of a world war, but with the direct fighting having moved on to other parts of the world. With a struggling Soviet Union and reluctant but fanatical East German security forces desperately trying to hold the territories they captured during the events of WW3RP, with danger around every corner and NATO mixing in to covertly steer things their way.
The final concept with all of its details and systems took a very long time to think up and work on, with the initial paper-only draft (before starting on coding it all) taking up a good couple of months. In the meantime everyone was already pushing for it to speed up. Contrary to a lot of claims made during the final days of Stasiland, the concept was mostly celebrated during the initial pitch and eventual announcement (though there's the considerable chance people didn't read the threads but instead just pushed for release of 'WW3RP').
I.I I want it all, and I want it now
Which brings us to the first cause of frustration during the initial development process. We initially pitched the concept of Stasiland to the public because we wanted to ensure we came up with something that'd be liked and supported before we decided to invest time and resources into it. I guess one can argue that pitching it ahead of time was the first mistake, but by that time there were already enough rumours and internal talks going on that we might as well own it and rally everyone together for it.
The first issue arose when people started assuming (and openly posting/proclaiming) that it 'wasn't a pitch, but an announcement', which planted the seed for everyone being under the impression that a full release was right around the corner despite us saying otherwise at every turn. In reality it took almost another year for everything to be in a workable state.
This set the stage for increased impatience amongst a lot of players, which had the nasty side effect of people just skipping through any new information and simply posting 'ok cool, but when?'. This vastly contributed to people not having a clue what we were actually creating but instead just 'wanting it released' without bothering to invest themselves or contributing.
I'm under the fair impression that if we could've avoided this and instead got the full input and dedication from everyone intending to play it, we'd have a more refined idea up for launch. In reality, most of the decisions and development had to come down to a handful of people who sometimes had to guess what people actually wanted since nobody actually contributed in-depth whenever we had a public info thread.
Eventually, the pressure to release reached further heights and we more-or-less neared completion on development. We removed a fair amount of features due to them being deemed unnecessary or only useful at a later date.
A custom map was created at this point, being a remake of a fan-favorite pushed to the limits of mapping. Even though it satisfied the basic requirements, it was deemed 'not optimal' due to a variety of issues. As such, a new map completely made from scratch was paid for and in the works. However, this map wouldn't be completed for a good couple of months due to various reasons, including the real-life situation of the mapper. It was then decided to go ahead with a release on the less-than-idea-but-still-okay map we had in backup. There's also the simple fact that the concept simply doesn't work unless the map completely accomodates it, in contrast with old ww3rp were anything'd do aslong as it had two opposing bases.
I.II The fault in our starts / finding solid ground
Skip ahead and we've passed the introduction events for the sign-up factions, which I won't go in-depth on in this thread, I think they went incredibly well and we all had a lot of fun in them, despite them being very stressful for the people managing it.
The initial opening of the server went like every other server opening would go, chaotic and stressful. We discovered about halfway through the first days that we'd have some rather serious issues, but I'll touch on those later on.
Another issue directly stemming from a development angle was a couple of remaining bugs in the code, mainly due to A) me having no coding experience prior to learning it to create Stasiland and B) systems being outdated by the time we launched. These were then exploited and abused by a relatively small amount of people that mainly just intended to harm the server and the community around it. Varying from on-demand server crashed to mercilessly killing and/or teleporting innocent players using exploits.
Some other bugs / exploits resulted in very high-tier weaponry such as the notorious DskH static machine gun falling into the hands of random civilians early on.
For examplem, there was a glitch where spawned machine guns would duplicate at the a specific point on the map, this was found out and exploited by several groups who quickly filled their coffers instead of alerting the staff. This in turn snowballed into the machine gun being used to kill entire patrols, and the AKs/ammo salvaged from those being used to further enhance the groups mentioned.
The server had further issues finding its bearing during the initial days. We became (pain)fully aware that a vast majority of people hadn't actually read up on any of the concepts and instead figured they'd just 'figure it out' or ask in !help until someone'd find the time to come explain it all to them. A large amount of people expected to connect and jump straight into the action, because it was WW3RP right? The people that immediately figured out the combat was going to be as promised, relatively hard to come by and with more serious consequences (but expected something else), either disconnected or tried to make it work anyways. This resulted in a large horde of people immediately gunning it for the closest weapon and then trying to swarm the rest in an effort to multiply their combat power.
One of my biggest frustrations in this section is one I will go more in-depth on later on, but seeing as it has to do with the map and the downward spiral we entered during the opening week I'll touch on it briefly. The way the map was handled.
As stated above, a lot of people clearly hadn't read any of the various lore and instruction documents, nor did they understand (willingly or not) the concept of the time period we were playing in. We had a city purposefully locked off with a wall and guarded checkpoints, with the outside forested area being declared 'bandit country' and armed border guards being periodically stationed on the watch towers.
Yet what almost immediately happened was people skipping over the wall or straight up running through the gates the moment a guard looked the other way. Eventually this turned into people simply being let out using thinly veiled excuses or actually being let out by an admin 'because there were no guards on', completely missing the concept of the gamemode and map design.
The above directly resulted in the entire city becoming desolate overnight, as nobody wanted to run around looting and crafting in the presence of armed troops and would rather duke it out with the Soviets for a chance at better 'loot', as that's what the mentality quickly became.
The grim atmosphere of having to avoid patrols while gathering your forces to fight back completely disappeared as everyone just ran around relatively out of danger, with hordes of throwaways just sacrificing themselves to kill lone Soviets/Stasi so their friends (who were conveniently in the area) could quickly grab the guns and run off.
What further contributed to the severe lack of city activity were the pre-launch sign up businesses. We opened up spots for people to set up some sort of gathering, shop or other venue to contribute to the overall roleplay and gather people in hubs to promote interaction.
In reality, however, half the shops that got signed up for were never claimed, with the 'owner' never even bothering to connect. The absolute biggest letdowns in this were the main restaurant and the specially-designed nightclub. The restaurant staff got on, got frustrated by the amount of time it took for the over-flooded staff to come sort out their starting supplies, disconnected and was never seen again. The nightclub was never claimed to begin with, instead remaining a large empty hub sitting right outside the spawn area.
The shared factors between the businesses/hubs that were never claimed / maintained was that the owners never bothered to let the staff know they had no further interest. So instead of us being able to give it to other, willing, players, more than half the venues in town sat unoccupied and abandoned for the entire opening week. Outside the city were the docks, which was the most promising 'gang-style' hideout, but was also blocked off on opening day for 'set up' and then completely abandoned by the group that applied for it.
A lot of crucial players who had signed up for leadership and limited-slot positions, and took part in the opening events, never showed up on the main server. Some who left positive feedback on the opening events simply never connected after those events were done, again not letting anyone know they can give the slot to someone else. This resulted in several key positions being left abandoned. This included at least 2 NJSOC operatives (out of like 5-6), several Stasi members, Soviet troops and NCOs and business owners.
Due to all of the above and the chaos of sorting stuff out, the leads that were present could not micro-manage everything going on, which resulted in notorious cases of the 'shrugging mentality' I will touch later on.
I.III The great divide
Naturally, WW3RP isn't WW3RP without inner struggles and conflict. In order to frame it properly, we have to once again remember the state in which WW3RP closed, and the state of the HL2RP server/playercount at the time Stasiland was 'supposed' to release.
Among those that actually did read up on the entire project progressing and the approaches we were taking, there were those that didn't have much issue with the atmosphere that dominated the old WW3RP server. Some were very subtle about it, others made it perfectly clear the only reason they played the WW3"RP" server was to be able to best the other side in combat and then proceed to humiliate/meme them about it.
Throughout the run of Stasiland, this friction between the players more heavily set on RP and those looking for the classic S2K fix escalated numerous times. With degrading playercounts, the pressure was mounted on the staff team to eventually further progress towards a faction vs faction open warfare setting. While this wasn't necessarily bad (it also spawned a lot of good things and fun situations), it came way too soon and was never enough to please the S2K-oriented crowd.
The plan was always to eventually, somewhere down the story, progress towards larger scale combat more similar to old WW3RP, but this didn't come soon enough for a lot of players, most of who refused to further invest in the server without it.
This became evident when 'geared' insurgents permanently died due to perfectly legit actions, and then proceeded to disconnect never to return. One could further notice it seeping through the cracks during the eventual introduction of a full-blown NATO invasion force, where both Soviet and NATO players would just stand AFK until sounds of combat were heard or they were alerted over external communications. More on this in one of the later points.
At the same time, HL2RP wasn't doing very well, and a fair amount of people were actually concerned that a new, hyped second server would be the final nail in the coffin of a server they invested years in. Although eventually unnecessary, this did spark a lot of friction both within and outside the staff. Comparisons between the concepts were quickly drawn, I won't go in depth on that issue since we already dedicated 4+ threads to it. However, this particular divide eventually led to us more-or-less having to agree to cutting significant segments out, including a civilian management/government, a full-on police force and other elements that were deemed too hl2-ey.
All in all, what this amounted to was a never-ending cycle of people pushing for both 'minor' and large-scale changes to the server and concept, claiming it'd get them invested again. We'd decide to go through with them, develop them and implement them. It then takes a couple of days (or even hours in one case) and then we're back to square one with people bringing up the same arguments to push for even more change in the direction they wanted it to go all along.
I eventually stopped doing simple voting polls because we'd get 50+ or sometimes even 100+ votes on an option, then we'd implement it and the majority of people voting wouldn't even bother showing up even though the server would completely change for the people that did still play it.
I.IV Greed and the irony of capitalism in a lore centered around communism
Here's a riddle to start us off: What makes up 13% of the playerbase, but also owns 50% of the gear?
In all seriousness, one of my biggest gripes with the player mentality during Stasiland was the obscene obsession with hoarding and not sharing anything no matter what. It wouldn't be fair to mention the larger groups that eventually dominated the landscape, they did supply their trusted members with equipment, but I'm mainly talking about points that contributed to the server's downfall.
Naturally, when the main income of gear and loot on the server is based on chance and scarcity, people are gonna hoard, it's only human. However, this hoarding and greeding appeared to take over virtually everything else no matter the conditions. A prime example was someone making a fuss about wanting to get paid for sharing ammo while they were literally under fire by an entire Soviet platoon attacking their camp. The guy 'loaning' the ammo and paying them afterwards apparently wasn't an option either, as he might die and never be able to repay his debt.
Eventually it got to the point where solo individuals that never really partook in operations or fights ended up with crates upon crates worth of guns, ammo and valuables. They'd quickly pick corpses like vultures or find ways to get their hands on equipment while running minimum risk, usually hanging back while the others did the fighting.
About halfway through the first map, some groups had a decently organized base with a stockpile of ammunition and high-grade goods such as static machine guns, landmines and enough small arms to pack quite the punch. However, these groups usually suffered from the 'im saving this for the boss fight' syndrome of just not touching stuff 'because they might need it at some point'. We eventually made an effort to crank up the influx of weaponry into circulation to give the people that actually wanted to do something a fighting chance, it usually ended up in the same coffers anyways.
Unfortunately, when the loner-hoarders and reclusive groups got PKd or simply lost interest and disconnected they were either still adamant on not letting 'their' gear end up in someone else's hands for the sake of the server or they'd actively go to their storage and start destroying their scripts one by one, simply to deny someone else getting their hands on it.
This continued as the server progressed, with the height of it being someone demanding 'alternative compensation' or a duplicate gun after he was asked to give a leftover event weapon he randomly found back to the staff member. As well as that one guy carrying three assault rifles and watching their group members die as they attempted to fight using a pipe gun during a last stand, knowing full well he'd likely die without them anyways.
We tried to counter the age-old pet peeve of people running around with literal millions by making money an actual item that can be stuffed in your pocket, combined into stacks etc. This was deliberately done to make people manage their money better, create stashes, use player-made banks or simply stop chasing paper that much. However, in practice it mostly meant people stuffed their entire inventory full with money they'd never spend, then complain about the inventory being too small or the money being stupid.
Granted, the system was not ideal. But the way it was handled on the server only furthers the point of the tunnel-vision that some individuals eventually came to adopt.
The same essentially goes for storage space. It was decided early on that we'd be very strict in regards to granting people container space. We'd want to avoid a map riddled with thousands of boxes, most of them belonging to unknown disappeared people. We made it clear that inventory management would be key this time around, and perhaps people should skip out on picking up every rock script they can find in favor of more useful stuff.
Should've seen that one coming in hindsight, there's this silent obsession with anything that's a script. The outright refusal to destroy/discard/sell/give away scraps of plastic or chunks of stone to make space, simply because it's a script left me baffled at times.
I.V The 'shrugging' mentality and more cheese than a dutchman's fridge
This is probably my favorite on my list of frustrations. Let me start by defining what the 'shrugging mentality' is in my book, there's two sides to it;
A) The 'shrug', as in, deliberately and actively not caring about the server's setting, guidelines, immersion or any other form to do with properly playing the server. Mostly stems from disinterest, not caring or simply not willing to invest/dedicate to the server and gameplay environment. This definition continues directly into I.VI
B) The 'shrug', as in, the inability (not necessarily intentionally) to immerse oneself within the setting of the server (the lore), being confused/uninformed about workings of systems and factions or generally not knowing what to do. As a result, the player stops caring and just does whatever.
The 'B' variant unfortunately caused us the most issues during the opening days. As mentioned earlier, with leadership being either completely absent or bogged down in the chaos and constant requests, players that had to interact with other factions were usually thrown off the deep end and more or less 'had to make do', at least until we had everything under control.
And that's where it went wrong. While some people were simply told to wait until things were more clear, the Stasi faction was completely overrun by everyone demanding stuff from them on day one. Yeah, regular east german civilians 'demanding' things from the famously authoritarian State Security, that's where people already either stopped caring about immersion or didn't understand the setting properly.
This ties directly into the issue surrounding the walled-off city having little meaning. Due to players not understanding the setting properly, both stasi and civilians figured it was fine to just let people through the local equivalent of the Berlin Wall for stuff such as 'I want to go hiking' or 'I need to go do something'. This eventually resulted in people feeling increasingly entitled to just move back and forth at will, even flooding !help with complaints if the gate was actually closed and guarded for once.
The same goes for the supposedly restricted permits, licenses and special identifications. Due to confusion about the procedures Stasi members eventually just started giving them out like candy to anyone who asked, unwilling to deal with figuring out how it was supposed to work. After a while it became impossible to reverse and all those systems lost their meaning entirely.
Icing on the cake was Stasi higher-ups simply disappearing during the first week and leaking (intentionally or not) all the hidden systems they had to monitor and document the civilian faction, and when asked why they'd do that they'd state 'didnt realize that was important'.
Almost immediately we'd have the same behaviour we'd always had on 'old' WW3RP, combat troops sprinting around the map with their fists out looking for the enemy, and when there wasn't any in direct sight, they'd sprint back to base to go stand AFK again. And if they found an enemy, it was likely they'd rush them as soon as possible, famous example being the brave Soviet who decided to swim across the water on fork_stasiland while shooting to ensure they got that kill instead of strategically retreating.
In closing, we can probably chalk a lot of it down to the 'niche' section of history that is highlighted in the concept. Naturally we can't expect everyone to know the ins-and-outs of Soviet/German history during the Cold War. That probably contributes a lot to these flaws. But I'd like to imagine there'd be alternatives to simply giving up and doing whatever.
Cheesing
Being a filthy dutchman, I know cheese. Yet I've never seen people try to cheese a gamemode as much as I have unfortunately witnessed during the course of Stasiland. While it's easy to assume this was only done by the people looking to get into quick action, it was represented in virtually every layer of the playerbase.
The search for the so-called 'meta' has always been present, but has become extra disappointing in this setting.
As the initial dust slowly started to settle it became obvious that a lot of people already managed to cheese their ways into positions where they could easily multiply their gear.
A typical scenario I've personally witnessed a dozen times goes as follows:
- Player 1 has Player 2 create a throwaway or something of the sort
- Player 1 hangs back while Player 2 rushes a 2-man team of Stasi officers with a rock he just found
- Taken by surprise, the Stasi cannot raise their guns quickly enough as they see the copy-pasted /mel of the guy opening melee s2k from a distance
- Both, or one, of the Stasi die and drop their weaponry. Player 2 usually dies in the process.
- Player 1 emerges from his cover, quickly grabs the guns and sprints into the forest
- Those guns, usually small pistols, are used to snipe confused soviets as they run around without any sense of coordination (a leftover from WW3RP where everyone would just sprint somewhere)
- Soviets die, drop AKs, Player 1 and his group (which usually includes Player 2 on another char) acquire 2-3 AK rifles and continue the routine with increased ease until they decide they've farmed enough Soviets for the day
- Players now have AKs and dont need anything else, essentially discarding 90% of the items, recipes, systems and other stuff developed for the gamemode. All they want to do is snipe Soviets from a ridge, which they can now do with relative ease.
After a while this became so common that everyone just accepted it as 'the way to play', meaning everything else in the game was useless. Nobody bothered crafting on a large scale anymore, nobody considered it necessary to invest in any of the 70+ other weapons available to them.
Eventually we decided to nerf this by making the Soviets no longer drop AKs and 'Soviet ammo'. Unfortunately, the response to this was mostly just people refusing to play anymore or not coming out of their base anymore since 'it wasnt worth it' now that they couldn't get their hands on the meta easily anymore.
Minor examples of this further include players running around spamming !help to ask if they can use /roll to loot every map prop they come across. Or people eventually doing the classic '/me has a dictionary' to bridge the language barrier that was put in for a reason.
People wanted a more hardcore experience, but practice really just shows that they don't.
I.VI That weird problem that keeps returning
This mostly refers to definition 'A' of the shrugging mentality. It applies to players that intentionally refuse to immerse themselves or provide immersion for others. The reasons are plenty, either they don't like the concept and try to play it as something else, they're unwilling to invest/read up in/on the lore or they simply dont care as long as they get their fix.
Classic examples are people bunnyhopping around and using phrases such as 'lad', 'bruh' and 'epic' as a supposedly East German citizen in the worst times of their lives. It mostly spawned a horde of really generic 'east german normal looking man' characters that immediately ran after NATO patrols, asked for a gun and just behaved like your average battle-hardened soldier without any room for RP in between fights.
It also applies to the more casual variants of people going the meme path out of either boredom or unwillingness to invest in anything meaningful. For example the people that made it their goal to get their hands on a trabbi car for the sole reason of just holding down the shift key and drifting around the map, made further clear when we nerfed the trabbi to behave more realistically, causing most of them to leave never to return.
In the later stages this applies to the NATO and Soviet soldiers (and their copycat civilians obviously) that joined up with a properly written application but never put it into practice. These're the people you'd see standing AFK around the base (or even on the field) until combat took place. The upper tier of these players mostly consisted of the players actively bashing the need to write up a proper application to get into a 'free-gun' military faction.
It's a direct contrast to the end-of-ww3rp closing thread where the vast majority reflected that they'd want more RP focus in a new iteration. Then again, it does fall in line with the playerbase' apparant inability to make up its mind and almost standard 'wanting something different' the moment they get what they asked for.
I.VII Land of the free, home of the unguided
This was probably at the very root of a lot of issues. It comes down to a vast underestimation by me and the other main staff who contributed to development.
Basically, the playerbase has almost always spoken out (sometimes viciously) against more restrictions and oversight. The complete freedom aspect of the concept was something that was applauded by a lot of people, finally a break from the boring routine of having to be in squads and not being able to wander and start your own groups.
However, as with previous cases where the playerbase doesn't really know what it wants, it turns out that too much freedom is probably even worse. The phrase 'you can do literally everything as long as it fits in the lore' quickly turned into 'there's fucking nothing to do, fuck this'. This refers directly to the point made about 'shrugging' about everything as a result.
The short conclusion is definitely that people need to be handheld if you wish to expect them to actually play and do something. There's a few examples of people taking the lead and starting their own RP which includes others, but those'd have to be natural leaders who are willing to take initiative. The unfortunate part is that the majority is made up out of the more reluctant follower types, evident when the leader of such a group dies and the members simply scatter and fade out of existence, not knowing what to do.
The major flaw in this was the assumption that people would behave as they would've back in 2009 gmod, where roleplay servers literally just put you on a map with a gravgun, some money and the ability to buy guns using default hl2 skins, and people created their own roleplay out of it.
We've been spoiled with fancy systems, cool content etcetera etcetera, people are no longer used to having this much freedom and usually cant or won't invest in doing something on their own. We were very loose on character applications, but received almost none unfortunately, and the ones we did get were usually about spawning with guns.
The stasi was completely disorganized and quickly overwhelmed to the point where they outright refused to play and half the faction stopped showing up after a while, taking away a major 'interactor' for the average civilian. Combine that with the absence of the hubs as mentioned earlier and you've got a recipe for disaster. No wonder people just started running around in circles and cheesing their way to guns. The RP hubs that were around quickly lost their purpose and were abandoned. With the exception of awesome groups like the firefighters, red cross etc.
I.VIII Toys above all else
This mainly became evident in the later stages of Stasiland, with the introduction of NATO. We decided that, rather than introducing new systems and content, we'd work with what we had developed for the NJSOC faction. We had several specialisations, such as engineer/crewman, infantry etc with each being issued their own personal weapon.
This quickly led to frustration amongst players who immediately wanted to switch spec simply because of the weapon they'd been given, with some just disconnecting and never returning because they didn't get the stuff they wanted.
The same goes for the scenarios where people outright quit the entire server and disappeared, often leaving their group and gear to fade out of existence too, over having lost certain equipment or being restricted in using certain items such as artillery and vehicles. Side notes on people leaving factions or complaining that they didn't get enough stuff during the inital opening events etc.
II. Future ambitions and would-be roadmap
Throughout the course of Stasiland I've had numerous ideas of where I would've liked to take the server over time, as well as event ideas that I really wanted to do at some point. I'll highlight some down here, not to say that these were the things that were definitly going to happen, but more so a collection of ideas.
II.0 Initial plans
The initial idea for Stasiland was a slow buildup from a reunified German state under Soviet control, cracking under the weight of a prolonged and overstretched war, to a full-blown lawless wasteland where different political groups struggle for control. All the while with NATO watching and covertly interfering from across the channel, being unable to divert more precious resources and troops away from the frontlines elsewhere.
Eventually we'd have come to a status quo where there'd be multiple player-organized 'armies', where we could accomodate by making their own uniforms, currency etc fighting against the Soviet armies. With the Stasi trying to hold onto their own political agenda and playing the direct counterpart to the NJSOC infiltrators lurking everywhere.
II.I The NATO crusade for Europe
The idea we eventually went with to facilitate the crying need people had for the faction v faction setting, it was the easiest path to justify two full-blown armies. The idea was for them both to be application-based to A) ensure quality control, B) skip the god-awful recruit training and C) have the focus of the newer players be the role of the war-torn civilian sitting in the middle with the freedom to do anything.
The path would eventually lead us to a half-repeat of the old cold war ww3rp, where familiar areas of Europe are once again contested with newer equipment. We'd likely have gone for events or map series set in Belgium and the Netherlands, showcasing the landings of the full NATO invasion force after the task force parachuted in.
The stasi would become remnants of sorts, either integrating with the Soviet forces as their intelligence and enforcement branch or cutting themselves loose and going forward as solo actors, either undercover or as holdouts. NJSOC would remain deep cover, little to no links with the NATO Task Force as they'd continue carrying out their orders.
II.II The Empire implodes
The Soviet Union caves under the pressure on its stretched forces and becomes somewhat disorganized, mass desertions, cut off from higher command, they essentially become somewhat of a remnant group along with the Stasi/NVA, whereas the civilians/insurgents organize into functional armies and push their own agenda, either for a NATO-aligned federalist state, complete independence or otherwise.
This would mostly follow the civil war path, with campaigns set on destabilizing and destroying garrisons and governments throughout Europe.
A really fun alternative route here would be a continuation of the Chinese involvement we started during old WW3RP, where we'd set the stage for the formation of the Coalition of Independent Nations as desperate, combined effort to preserve communism against the NATO 'agressor'.
II.III Fractured World
Total chaos, NATO invades and becomes the main focus of the Soviet troops, while the Stasi organize themselves into an indepent group hell-bent on reclaiming Germany for their own without Soviet involvement. Three-way warfare between Armies while the civilians make use of the confusion to arm themselves and become a functional fighting units as well.
While very interesting, it would be unlikely we'd regularly have enough players to properly simulate this scenario.
II.IV Red Dawn
Alternate history, with the Soviet forces crushing the rebellions, driving NATO back in East-Asia and regaining the initiative in WWIII. Eventually culminating in a combined invasion of England, and further down the line the USA.
We'd be able to use a lot of American-themed maps, with the civilians being armed resistance against the invader with a large influx of Army remnants, National Guard, Police forces etc.
(WW)III. What I sorta really want to do [Discussion]
Looking back, I've learned a metric fuckton about developing concepts, coding/developing my own stuff and a bunch of other shit. The old WW3RP closed before we got the chance to use all the new maps, equipment, systems, vehicles, weapons etc that have been released in recent years. I'm convinced that if we were to revisit the initial concept of an S2K-based gamemode with heavy RP elements we'd probably be able to create the most sophisticated and large-scale version of WW3RP yet.
All the systems and code are still here and I've kept them updated during the downtime, which is a big plus should we ever want to use them again.
A concept I've regularly been thinking about while taking a shower or sitting on the toilet is this:
- 'Classic' Faction v Faction, but with actual non-cloned different factions this time. Embrace the s2k/rp hybrid and recognize that the combination of the two is what made it enjoyable despite all the grievances. The difference between factions needs to be made noticable in gameplay to better spice things up.
- One side is the Warsaw Pact troops, comprised of the Soviets with the Stasi/East Germans as their intelligence/infiltration/MP branch. Has a typical hierarchy and distinct branches and patrol structures.
- Other side is the organized insurgency, comprised of civilian insurgents shaped into a crude, but functional army. Groups within this army can be player-made, but we'd definitly have some standard departments, these can change at will and are more fluid. Different patrol rules compared to a 'regular' army and less hierarchical.
- The NATO invasion is retconned, instead Task Force Europa (TFE) becomes the 90s-equivalent of MACV-SOG, where they're something like a regimental-sized task force sent to reinforce and assist the insurgent armies through deployment of specialists. In practice this'd mean that NATO members are part of the insurgency faction, but fulfill specific roles (that realistically speaking civilians wouldnt be able to do) such as pilots, radiomen and officers to train, lead and advise.
- NJSOC can keep doing their thing to add the espionage angle for all sides involved, same with the Stasi special branch.
- Guns are placed in vendors just like before, with a form of requisition (named supplies or something) making a return as currency. Starter weapons are free, such as homemade crude weaponry for insurgents and basic rifles for the Soviets, with additional and better weaponry being purchasable.
- All crafting systems remain in the game, with insurgents being able to craft uniforms, vehicles, weapons and more for themselves over time.
- Both sides have a wide array of vehicles, with the Soviets having their own Air Force while the insurgents have the NATO detachment with small but nimble attack helicopters and advanced anti-aircraft missile launchers.
- Less combat rules, at least at the start. The soviets follow distinct patrol rules, while the insurgents have more flexible permissions in regards to going into the combat areas (maybe allow civilians to move freely unless they're clad in combat gear such as vests and carrying unconceable weapons?) More freely deployable vehicle comat (due to player-deployable key systems!) to better simulate all-out war. Usage of flamethrowers, tankbuster rifles, WW2-shit, vietnam-era SMGs, revolvers, muskets, you name it.
- Simple, bi-monthly polls whether to stay on the map or move on to the next throughout an event of sorts.
- Thorough analysis of lessons learned from the Stasiland concept and previous iterations, while returning to the roots that kept people playing somewhat.
- Finally a chance to actually use the 80+ weapons and other combat systems we never got to use during Stasiland.
- Probably adding more as I remember my previous brainstorms, its late. But the best of all: It's all already coded save for a few minor edits and testing.
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