Serious Stasiland reflections

[mert]

Except you @mert

see you in Stasiland II

 

['77 East]

I think we stopped allowing non-staff to take planes out after this happened.

 

[Deleted member 61]

A huge problem was the decision to split the STASI/SAF to begin with.

Having the NVA (which consisted of the Stasi, NVA troops [as auxiliaries], civilian agents and D9) serve as a secondary antagonist faction just meant it and the SAF were constantly fighting over the few players who were active.

Didn't think of this but it's definitely right. The server didn't have anywhere near enough people to have two fully functional, opposing factions, never mind the stasi and other sub factions. Although I enjoyed having NVA and SAF chars, it didn't help with activity and the NVA had massive activity issues throughout

As stasi lead, i can certainly agree in hindsight. the issue wasn't that we didn't know this, but when we were pushed towards a more combat focused with less city RP, we adjusted to meet the resistance, which at that point, there was only really one major group.

I spoke to people in Stasi and it seemed as if they wanted to keep their characters and wanted to be NVA. Which was fine by me, the only issue being activity and the military playerbase split. I was more than happy to return Stasi to a primarily investigative and undercover faction as well as manage governmental issues, but I don't want to force characters into situations that aren't within their character.

It was a tough spot for me to be in. I think we should've kept to the original idea of stasi/KGB being the brains with Soviets being the brawn BUT!
We would've never gotten the Haas vs. Rozkhov anime battle in the garage.

 

[Roosebud]

A huge problem was the decision to split the STASI/SAF to begin with.

Having the NVA (which consisted of the Stasi, NVA troops [as auxiliaries], civilian agents and D9) serve as a secondary antagonist faction just meant it and the SAF were constantly fighting over the few players who were active.

I'm still writing up my own reflections, but just wanted to type a quick response to this particular thingy.

The Stasi and Soviets were never intended to be the 'one' antagonist faction, couple of reasons for that.

• Historically, the East Germans and Soviets were allies but also served their own interests and withheld aid/information from eachother when deemed necessary. Place that in the lore context of the Soviets treating germany like a backwater with the troops stretched thin across the globe and it should serve to create more tension between the two.

• We wanted to avoid it becoming your generic civilians vs big bad evil group thing, the triangle-conflict between all parties with NJSOC in the middle doing their own thing was intended to spawn more interesting scenarios. The stasi and the soviets, being allies on paper would be involved in more standoffs and inner conflicts as the server progressed.

• Both factions had different objectives, the Stasi wanted to preserve the Socialist reunified German state and enforce their own political will under martial law (which is why the VP etc was disbanded) while the Soviets were just there to garrison the place against potential invaders and more-or-less make sure the germans were following the Soviet doctrine, as well as supply the Soviet army with resources to continue the war.

Naturally we didn't expect (or well, maybe we did but we figured it'd sort itself out) that most people would just flock to the factions to shoot epic guns and thus abandon the entire non-army insurgent and clandestine stuff, eventually causing us to make drastic choices in order to adjust the ratio amongst the factions. I didn't particulary like using the NVA as that was the Soviet's job, but on the other side the Stasi at that point were underequipped, undermanned and highly demotivated to do anything, the stasi players pre-NVA just chilled within their base because they cba to go outside and get shot/mugged by some random fellow.

 

[mert]

Stasi at that point were underequipped, undermanned and highly demotivated to do anything, the stasi players pre-NVA just chilled within their base because they cba to go outside and get shot/mugged by some random fellow.

almost everything stasi did pre-NVA was pointless.

 

[Roosebud]

almost everything stasi did pre-NVA was pointless.

Not entirely true, at least they did have the tools and functions to do more. It's just that the majority of the playerbase they were supposed to interact with decided they didn't want to bother or cheesed their way to s2k, which is something that went completely wrong at the early beginnings in all sorts of ways.

 

[Northgate]

If I think back to Stasiland, I have one song in particular stuck in my head: ankunft.mp3

During the Frankfurt era, that song usually meant "an event was about to happen", which always got me excited. I researched a bit, and found the original song, labelled "Ankunft in Stalingrad".

Spoiler: Ankunft in Stalingrad

Honestly, this song still means so much to me. I really miss all of it at times, especially that one damn song. It was mysterious, meant action was coming and hell, it got me to continue. I'd be overjoyed to hear that song in the context of an event again, and be with the gang.

 

[mert]

Not entirely true, at least they did have the tools and functions to do more. It's just that the majority of the playerbase they were supposed to interact with decided they didn't want to bother or cheesed their way to s2k, which is something that went completely wrong at the early beginnings in all sorts of ways.

aye basically everything stasi did was pointless and useless in the end

 

['77 East]

@afric ngl the stasi intro event would have gone a lot smoother if they actually read up on how the terminals worked

 

[afric]

@afric ngl the stasi intro event would have gone a lot smoother if they actually read up on how the terminals worked

frederalists
[doublepost=1611743027][/doublepost]

If I think back to Stasiland, I have one song in particular stuck in my head: ankunft.mp3

During the Frankfurt era, that song usually meant "an event was about to happen", which always got me excited. I researched a bit, and found the original song, labelled "Ankunft in Stalingrad".

Spoiler: Ankunft in Stalingrad

Honestly, this song still means so much to me. I really miss all of it at times, especially that one damn song. It was mysterious, meant action was coming and hell, it got me to continue. I'd be overjoyed to hear that song in the context of an event again, and be with the gang.

this was the soviet theme in their event and remained in the content post-launch, in the end it signalled that those soviets were up to something

 

[Anthrax_PL]

hah

loved that i started a meme by deleting everything accidentally

 

[Deleted member 5162]

I still remember how I was walking on a hill and saw like an entire platoon of soviets and germans near the dock station, with BTR and all. I watched them fight and shoot insurgents in the city for 5 minutes or so, it was quite interesting even if it was far away.

Then I decided to pull out makarov pistol and start 'sniping' the soviets, took out one or two, and eventually reached the point that I kept all of them pinned in one building and Close-Air-Support was called, which killed me in 1 rocket when I fired and hurt the pilot lmao, got told that I wouldn't be PK'd since the helicopter was trying to S2M and hit me hiding in the forest.

Someone said that they thought they were being shot at by an actual sniper with a rifle, but it was just a fart-gun with 9mm.


Big Fork map was where all of the magic of WW3RP happened, long-range combat, NATO drones, planes, helicopters, white phosphorous, formation of insurgency, assassination of Scherbina by molotov, and endless source of gold-tier memes.

 

[echs dee]

I still remember how I was walking on a hill and saw like an entire platoon of soviets and germans near the dock station, with BTR and all. I watched them fight and shoot insurgents in the city for 5 minutes or so, it was quite interesting even if it was far away.

Then I decided to pull out makarov pistol and start 'sniping' the soviets, took out one or two, and eventually reached the point that I kept all of them pinned in one building and Close-Air-Support was called, which killed me in 1 rocket when I fired and hurt the pilot lmao, got told that I wouldn't be PK'd since the helicopter was trying to S2M and hit me hiding in the forest.

Someone said that they thought they were being shot at by an actual sniper with a rifle, but it was just a fart-gun with 9mm.


Big Fork map was where all of the magic of WW3RP happened, long-range combat, NATO drones, planes, helicopters, white phosphorous, formation of insurgency, assassination of Scherbina by molotov, and endless source of gold-tier memes.

i remember when a attack heli was trying to S2M but fired a couple rockets directly at the AA gun

 

['77 East]

anyone got a picture of the garage musket bandit's last stand?

 

[STUCK IN A CAKE]

Let's just say I enjoyed being a farmer, despite the fact my Farmhouse was a 'Noteworthy Location' that got searched like every hour by soviets or had gangs trying to mug me for food (and drugs). It was fun for a while. However, as populations dropped and shit, it was much harder to do anything.

One problem I found was a distinct lack of being able to do anything, like, if I didn't have my farm or car. I would've just run around the map looking for someone since Fork is a huge ass map. It was hard to find people and do someone in the short term that would be fun. You had to either be in a pre-determined group of friends/gang or business or within an actual faction to have a goal in mind. The common player base was essentially thrown into this cool map with cool features without even the slightest clue on what they should even be doing.

I barely saw any conflict during my period. The only noteworthy thing that happened was someone raided the airfield and my farm was next to it. My Character, Eric Armbruster, had a lot of dealings with groups, selling cocaine, refining red-phosphorous and stored DShK's in his barn, but even then, it felt like I was pointless within the world. Watching other people go around attacking checkpoints and having these epic gamer moments. Which if I felt pointless, I can't imagine how bored an average player with no flags or anything would be doing.

Stasiland had plenty of great ideas, some really cool features (except the money, please I just want to carry money and not take 90% of my inventory) but it felt really exclusive to factions or people who, as I said, already established. The server felt too 'open' if you catch my drift, where you spawn as a citizen, but it's not like hl2rp where you're forced within the city and there's already this established lore most people are familiar with. But instead, you're in Germany and you're not quite sure what to do with yourself.


To conclude, I enjoyed stasiland, it was fun and was pretty funny at times. But citizens make up a bulk of the playerbase, and without a designated 'role' for them to have, just meant all they could do is run around the map and passive rp with the one Wayfinder they met on the way

 

[Postal]