the holy grail

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    • the holy grail

      alright dog ive returned one last time to save the hl2dm rp scene from being dogshit.
      ive spent years trying to figure this shit out so this is worth a read. these changes will save the game and cause not only a complete comeback to golden age of like 2009, but also newfound popularity, more than fortnite or squid game or whatever is poppin nowadays. in fact, i wouldnt be surprised if they turn hl2dm rp into an esport after these suggestions revolutionize the game. like any good game developer, the goal is to get the playerbase absolutely addicted, im talkin like actual withdrawal symptoms when they stop playing. after gaming on some of the most popular garbage around like New World i've cracked the code so pay close attention. the future and soul of the most niche gaming community of all is at stake here.

      gangs
      the only time i be seeing big gangs fail is when players stop playing. nonsense, i wanna see gangs literally wiping eachother out. i wanna see hustler literally shit his pants as his communist party gang or whatever straight up dissolves like the fall of rome after he and his gang members die one too many times. i wanna see him cry himself to sleep knowing hes gonna have to bust his ass wide open just to make minimal progress...and yet even he knows he will enjoy every second of it. my ideas revolve around making respect a sort of point to indicate general progress. you live, die, and aim for respect. it comes relatively easily, but to amass large quantities to reap any meaningful benefit, teamwork is the best option. i want to see some tribal shit go on, like strategic attacks between gangs with things of real value to be lost.

      first, i propose something like a gang-respect-health-bar sort of thing. heres the idea:
      when you make a gang, the gang has a respect treasury where you and your members must dump some of your respect into to keep the gang poppin. the gang dismantles if the treasury is at 0 for too long, say two days or so. this means that more avenues to acquire respect are necessary or the game would be an even more barren wasteland. id also say the cash req to form a gang to begin with should be lowered. the benefits: more new players will be forming their own shit and just as will be destroyed in the process. i'd say the new cash req should be abt 50k.

      second, i propose a complete change to the way gangs function.
      gang specialties are no longer jobs. that means you can pick any non-cop job while also in a gang. this also means that there is no safety while in a gang, you can't switch to civilian no more.
      gangs are now just a modifier to the job you select, which grants some amount of respect when the job is used properly, eg. drug grower grants 1 respect per 100g of marijuana sold.
      with that being said, specialties cease to exist. the types of bonuses normally from specialties can be moved to gang level benefits, so say as the owner of a gang you decide to spend 5k respect from the treasury to upgrade your gang level. the benefits could be something like 20% shorter doorhack/cuffsaw/lockpick cooldowns, or a 50% chance to save a lockbreaker on use, stuff like that. naturally, the percentages would scale with gang level, and levels like 5, 10, 15 could be used as milestones for gaining a new type of passive attribute. anyways, the theory is to make gangs more interactive with the actual flow of gameplay. gangs now consist of real criminals instead of fools with no real purpose but to kill for the sake of kill points.

      third, i propose some new ways to obtain respect. the first avenue is obvious with the previous changes i mentioned. jobs now grant some respect for doing the job. here are some examples:
      Robber: +1 respect per full robbery when a cop is online
      Drug Grower: +1 respect per 300g of marijuana sold
      Counterfeiter: +1 respect per $2,000 collected
      Bounty Hunter: +1 respect per 1,000 crime that the bounty had
      Hacker: +1 respect per hack when a cop is online
      Cuffsaws: +1 respect per 60 seconds of remaining imprisonment (eg. a cuffsawing a prisoner with 139 seconds remaining would grant 2 respect)
      Dailies: +2 respect per level of daily completed, eg. a tier IV would grant 8 respect, a tier II would grant 4. this does not apply to cop dailies, obviously.

      with the new ways to gain respect, the ability to lose respect is amplified. being cuffed and sent to jail now takes away 1 respect per 800 crime, in addition to the base amount of 2 respect lost.

      "Rank: <title>" would be displayed in the HUD right under Employment. this was previously gang employment like Mafia Associate
      "Treasury: <respect #>" would be displayed in the HUD right under Respect
      /depositrespect <respect #> would deposit some of your personal respect into the gang's respect treasury. this process is not reversible, once it's there it can't be retrieved
      /upgradegang is only usable to the gang owner. it upgrades your gang at the cost of respect from the treasury
      /tonextlevel displays the amount of treasury respect required to upgrade the gang

      money
      now i really dont know whats been goin on with the economy, be it inflation or whatnot, but there aint no way mfs should be making millions and be all safe and snug in their mansions within weeks of an econ reset. perhaps dailies are too rewarding, or the conventional grind methods of acquiring cash like growing are too safe, or a lack of money sinks. either way, too much positive growth, not enough despair. gangbases are made impenetrable too easily, and even if you manage to force your way in, there is virtually nothing at stake. that's not what I want to see. I want to see some serious heists. serious gang wars. make raids great again, pd or gang related.

      here's what I think. make bank cash unsafe. millionares beware, safety now mostly comes from social connections and straight up deathmatch skill, not some impenetrable bank account.
      tax em to death, tax em for dying. bank accounts must be defended. huge transfers of wealth can occur in seconds. you are now at risk of fumbling REAL bags.
      the days of victimless money spawning are over. in this utopian dystopia, winners take all and losers are left to suffer as penniless bums. only the strong will survive and only the smart will thrive. robbing a bank doesn't just print money, it takes it from somebody else on the server. marijuana prices fluctuate based on supply and demand of the dealer and drug runners. counterfeit money now has victims as cops and NPCs wise up to your fake money schemes. banks are no longer unbreachable fortresses. gang bases are the true storage houses of great wealth, and they must be defended to the bitter end lest you want to go broke.
      it all sounds like a pipe dream, but it would make for one hell of a game.

      here's some ideas:

      realistic™ banking systems - the bank keeps track of the sum of all wealth stored in it by all online players. this also means we could create two or more distinct banking districts to add variety.
      this sort of model allows for some interesting stuff, a robber could begin robbing and a player on the server could start losing bank cash right before their eyes. maybe this would encourage you to do some actual vigilante work, forcing the robbers to act like real robbers, under the threat of society lashing back. perhaps the bank account HUD number shouldn't update to reflect the outcome of a robbery until the robbery ends, thus preventing the player from being robbed from simply disconnecting at the sight of their wealth diminishing. perhaps you could upgrade your bank security to move yourself up the priority list and people lower on the list are more likely to be the victim in the event of a robbery. perhaps robbers could have the option of going for the high-security bank accounts of rich players, with the help of a hacker, and at the cost of more crime. perhaps a gang's respect treasury could be diminished after being robbed, and if it is low enough, a raid could disband an entire gang.

      realistic™ drug business - drug buyer NPCs now keep track of how many grams they have purchased from drug grower players. drug runner players now withdraw weed for delivery from the dealer NPCs (by paying collateral) and must run over to an NPC that is selected to accept the weed, as indicated by a tracer shown by a command. once the weed is delivered, it is deleted from the system. different drug buyer NPCs offer variable prices to buy weed based on how many grams they have stockpiled. perhaps $9 per gram when they are empty and as low as $3 when they are completely full at say 30,000 grams (at which point grams just get deleted when they are bought by the NPC). note that grams for delivery need to be different from grams to be sold to an NPC to prevent an infinite cycle of accepting delivery, death, and resale.

      gangbase and commercial safes™ - say we implement a cap to bank storage, eg. a 100k limit. in order to horde any more wealth, you would need to buy a safe. a safe is a prop to be frozen in a house and is yours to guard. if you are gang member, you can't place a safe. if you are the owner of a gang, the safe is accessible to anyone in the gang. note however that safes are personal enterprises, a gang member can't access another gang member's safe money. safes are private and would store say 100k by default, but can be upgraded to hold more based on gang level and cop status. i'd say cops shouldn't be allowed to own safes and are instead in possession of a higher bank storage cap. upon leaving or being kicked from a gang, your safe balance is transferred to your bank, and it is allowed to exceed the cap, but you won't be able to deposit any more while over the cap. you would have to buy a house and a personal safe to continue your wealth hoarding conquest.

      now ive managed to hit the 10,000 char limit so ill finish this novel in a comment

      the goal is to make banking vulnerable in some way, plus this creates more money sinks, complications, and strategies. a safe can be robbed by non-gang members if you are in a gang, or by anyone if you are not. this does not include cops of course, they should probably be allowed to prevent such robberies if there is sufficient crime. robbing a safe would follow the robbing changes i previously proposed. only online players can be the victim, there is an internal cooldown of say one hour, there is a max percentage of money that can be extracted per robbery, there is a hierarchy of probability for who is selected to be the victim based on respect. those with higher respect are less likely to be the victim. perhaps with a high number of rival gang members at the safe, the robbery of higher-ranked gang members is permitted. if a victim leaves while their safe is being robbed, the max amount to be robbed is immediately transferred over to the robber. if a person tries to cheat the system and disconnect mid-raid to prevent the safe from being robbable, i suggest two possible solutions: a trust system, where you just report it to an admin who then considers the evidence and comes up with a rationable verdict. or a system where a safe is still robbable for like 5 mins after disconnect. i suppose implementing both at the same time would have its benefits.
      also note that afking while in a gang would be particularly riskier and so it should yield greater rewards: wage is amplified by gang level. eg. at gang level 5, your base wage is doubled.

      alright thats all for now, you can thank me after these changes put hl2dm rp back on the map and this server becomes a household name to all gamers worldwide.
      in all seriousness, these ideas are radical and mostly underdeveloped, and they are meant to be. i don't expect any to be added but i'd say even some severely watered-down versions of these ideas could be of great benefit.

      The post was edited 1 time, last by FORK KNIFE ().

    • FORK KNIFE wrote:

      here's what I think. make bank cash unsafe. millionares beware, safety now mostly comes from social connections and straight up deathmatch skill, not some impenetrable bank account.
      Noooooo bird and I would be dirt poor instantly....;-; ;(
      The flaw with it though is that an impenetrable bank account is sometimes the only protection a player has. Especially while starting out. If one particular player is hated enough they could also get run out of town much faster this way. Either way, locks/player protection is a hard topic. I don't think it hasn't been solved because of a lack of action. I don't disagree that it should take deathmatch skill though.

      if you're going to make respect easier to gain, you have to make it easier to lose it.
      I do like the idea of giving respect for dailies though.
      Instead of merging the specialties into one, I'd rather have more division. More reason for someone not to choose Snowden. And I like to think there was a reason why switching gang specialties costs 150k


      As for the robbery system, I like the idea of it however it only sounds like it would only be good on paper. Cause what happens when you end up just robbing someone whose AFK and you take like half their bank account and no one notices.
      CSGO CoLD Admin. Mapper. Server Destroy Supreme Master Extraordinaire. sniper
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    • There are tiny slivers in here that could be utilized as a good idea. Unfortunately this would probably require rebuilding multiple entire plug ins on a pretty much dead game and a extremely limited dev team. There is also the issue of stability among other things.

      While money is being made ez and is building up, the simplest, easiest to code, and possibly more stable method would be to add money sinks. With this in mind, we should look at ways to expand the new implemented prestige system into more than it is among launch.

      A simple concept would be a way before the season ends to exchange cash for prestige points, because you are getting it faster it could be more costly than waiting for an eco reset. And then utilize this as a way to add things to buy in the prestige store, skins, consumables maybe. This is a new system that has the sky as the limit for its current potential, and can be shaped into whatever we agree to make it.

      The simplest version of a money sink at the end of the day is consumables. This is shown in lockbreakers(which can also lead to locks), food, suit, weapons, ammo, furniture, blowtorchs, one time use skins, etc. Create consumables that people want to buy.

      I like where your headspace and energy is at bud, it's just not in a bigger picture and realistic mindset that simpler solutions will prevail.
    • Grubbsy wrote:

      Noooooo bird and I would be dirt poor instantly....;-; ;( The flaw with it though is that an impenetrable bank account is sometimes the only protection a player has. Especially while starting out. If one particular player is hated enough they could also get run out of town much faster this way. Either way, locks/player protection is a hard topic. I don't think it hasn't been solved because of a lack of action. I don't disagree that it should take deathmatch skill though.
      this is true, this system would place much more emphasis on getting people to not hate you. in theory, if you are a good dmer, gangs would want you in them rather than against them. those who suck at compromising and killing would have an even shorter end of the stick. these people are the greatest beneficiaries of gang protection in exchange for loyalty. these people wouldn't last very long on this server anyways.

      in theory, people would have better things to do than to go around rdming, and respect would be easier to lose upon being cuffed/bounty killed, so killing would need to be more strategic than random if the game is to be played as intended (that is, to achieve to goal of high respect, max level gang, max capacity safe, max locks on doors/safe, etc.).

      the 10 hour rule exists for a reason, though it's disabled rn for whatever reason. if a noob wants to really understand the game, we are better off writing the basic interpersonal aspects of this game in the MOTD or something, eg. when you kill someone, they tend to be petty and will kos you unless you apologize, pay them off, and so on. they'd need to understand that when you kill one gang member, they'll all be bent towards you. they'd need to understand that you just gotta suck up to people to get anywhere sometimes. they'd need to understand that real power lies in connections and skill, not just money and bases. this is not anything new.

      Grubbsy wrote:

      if you're going to make respect easier to gain, you have to make it easier to lose it.
      I do like the idea of giving respect for dailies though.
      Instead of merging the specialties into one, I'd rather have more division. More reason for someone not to choose Snowden. And I like to think there was a reason why switching gang specialties costs 150k
      i noted somewhere that respect would in fact need more ways to be lost, but i didn't get into that very deep. i'll give you some more ideas on that.
      for the whole respect treasury idea, if a gang safe gets robbed, the treasury loses a significant amount of respect. if the treasury was already low on respect, the gang could be disbanded entirely.
      for personal respect, getting cuffed/bounty killed with high crime should lead to a higher loss of respect. this ups the stakes, if you are a 5* criminal trying to game the system, jail time is the least of your worries, you'll potentially be losing like 50 respect if you can't swerve the police and bide your time out in your base. to make something like that more possible, perhaps crime should decay exponentially rather than linearly. eg. if you have 20k crime, it would only take 3 mins to get down to 15k crime, so long as you stop committing crime.

      for specialties, i disagree. i think more variety is always better and i think a gang level system where you can climb and grind to achieve superior benefits is ideal. i think it's disappointing that the only gang-related job that procures cash is hacking. you'd think that a gang would be full of drug growers, counterfeiters, etc., why isn't that the case? why can't you be simultaneously in a gang role and be jobbing it up? just saying, a change like that would be lit.

      Grubbsy wrote:

      As for the robbery system, I like the idea of it however it only sounds like it would only be good on paper. Cause what happens when you end up just robbing someone whose AFK and you take like half their bank account and no one notices.
      a few things, there would be an internal cooldown to prevent the same player from being the victim of a bank robbery. robbing a banker would still have a cooldown as well, so for someone to be losing half their bank account, it would take days of them afking, some unlucky rng, and a really persistent robber.

      heres another thought. the safe system protects your money from being robbed via bankers. the safe has to be robbed when a person breaks into your house and cracks open your safe. i think another interesting idea would be to add locks to a safe. there should be an enforced ratio of locks to max money storable, around 2:3, meaning if your safe can store up to 300k, you are only allowed to add up to 200 locks.

      here's an idea that wouldn't require massive plugin overhauls. the pd has a safe. when civilians are at the safe, it can be opened, but only after waiting 3 mins after interacting with it. once open, every player near the safe is granted some money. the safe can only be interacted with when at least two cops are online. when the safe is interacted with, a global warning is announced. there is say a 1-2 hr cooldown on interacting with the safe. if a cop manages to interact with the safe while it is being cracked open, it goes on cooldown (perhaps the cop must stay alive for 5-10 seconds when trying to secure the safe).

      MeTaL ^x^ wrote:

      While money is being made ez and is building up, the simplest, easiest to code, and possibly more stable method would be to add money sinks. With this in mind, we should look at ways to expand the new implemented prestige system into more than it is among launch.

      A simple concept would be a way before the season ends to exchange cash for prestige points, because you are getting it faster it could be more costly than waiting for an eco reset. And then utilize this as a way to add things to buy in the prestige store, skins, consumables maybe. This is a new system that has the sky as the limit for its current potential, and can be shaped into whatever we agree to make it.

      The simplest version of a money sink at the end of the day is consumables. This is shown in lockbreakers(which can also lead to locks), food, suit, weapons, ammo, furniture, blowtorchs, one time use skins, etc. Create consumables that people want to buy.

      I like where your headspace and energy is at bud, it's just not in a bigger picture and realistic mindset that simpler solutions will prevail.

      these changes would add more money sinks than ever before. i've thought about money sinks before and have never come to a viable solution, the game just isn't that deep in it's current form. people make millions and have nowhere to spend it and no way to lose it. i think adding more ways to lose it would fill the game with adrenaline. i think adding more ways to spend it, following my changes, adds more strategy. i think the doggy ought to be made a slave to this community and spend the next ten or so years of his life bringing these ideas to fruition.

      from my understanding prestige points take into account your bank cash, so however much money you have already influences your prestige. as impressive as it may have been to implement, i'm not too enthralled by it as it stands. it's cosmetic, it doesn't really make the game any more worthy of playing. let's just add a battle pass, you spend in game money (or real life money) to progress the pass. the pass has tiers, so after spending 10mil in game, you get your name tattooed on syles ass. prestige is a bunch of permanent consumables based on "power level" rather than money sinking. it's just a freebee to gameplay in its current form, and since it exists across econ resets, it probably shouldn't be anything more than just cosmetic. i don't think it holds the key to turning hl2dmrp into a global esport.

      lockbreakers are bought far less often than locks. there just isn't any point in breaking into bases when it would cost 1mil and give a massive amount of crime. i've actually never seen a blowtorch be used, but that doesn't mean it's bad or anything. i've produced suggestions on adding "consumables," like more printing/planting supply variety, but alas it just seems futile, it doesn't change gameplay in any meaningful way. the best changes are systemic changes. start with making respect the well to dump your resources into, time, money, blood, sweat, tears. some easy changes can be made to respect that don't shake the system too much, but add way more dopamine to the recipe.

      ill append my newer ideas to this thread since they pertain to its content. these suggestions are intended to optimize fun gameplay with relatively minimal systemic change.

      topic: event-based gameplay (aka when a global announcement is made at the start and end of the event)
      only one event is allowed to occur at once. antlion guard and zombie spawns are not considered events.
      to give an example of this, a gang war cannot occur at the same time as a pd raid. when an event is started, the commands to initiate any other event is disabled and stays disabled for 1-2 hrs after the current event ends.

      pd raid / lockdown
      from my understanding, only some maps have a built-in lockdown button in the pd. this idea is to make the lockdown event applicable across all maps and to allow more content to be attached to them (vault, scorekeeping, future ideas). a bit of rewording occurs below, pd/gang vault is identical to the safe idea above.

      here's the idea:
      when at least 2 cops are online, a vote to start a pd raid can be created by a cop (if they feel it is appropriate, eg. people are ganging up on them to farm respect) using /lockdown.
      when started, cops can attack anyone anywhere (though cops should also avoid killing the unarmed/uninvolved). if we were to add a robbable pd vault, this is when the vault would become robbable. cops also earn 1 exp per rebel kill during the lockdown to encourage participation. pd raids have three possible endings (five if we include vaults): rebels win by points, cops win by points, cops win by time. alternatively, rebels could win by capturing the vault, or cops could win by securing the vault mid-capture.

      this scoreboard would track cop and rebel kills as points and be displayed via global announcements, eg. every 5 kills an announcement like this is displayed: "Rebels: 25 - Cops: 10", and whichever team gets to 100 points first wins. sending players to jail should count as 1 point, maybe cuffsawing players should count as 1 point as well. (note that friendly-fire does not influence the scoreboard, so rebel on rebel / cop on cop violence does not garner any points). the number of points to win should probably be adjustable to the number of rebels and cops online, determined by how many people respond to the callvote.

      to refresh your memory, the vault (or safe) is a prop that, after being interacted with, starts a 3 minute (or longer) timer before granting rewards to those who interacted with it, so long as they stay alive and uncuffed. it would be placed and frozen deep within the pd to an admin or cops discretion. perhaps cops could add locks to the vault in exchange for raising the rewards it provides. perhaps the vault could award more than just money, but also weapons, food, and rare items like blowtorches, rebel tools, and lottery tickets. the vault rewards should be random but have a higher probability of greater rewards based on the number of participants and the number of people at the vault upon capture. perhaps capturing the vault should not directly end the raid but still disable after capture or securement, and perhaps it should then add some points to the team who secures it, eg. if rebels capture it, their team gets 25 points to the raid effort. same with cops, if they secure the vault mid-capture, then they would get the points and perhaps some sort of cash/item reward as well.

      if no ending is reached after 1 hour, cops win by default. after any ending, the lockdown command should probably be on cooldown for 1-2 hours. the rewards for participating could be like a bonus equal to your contribution. eg. if you contributed 22 points to the effort, you are granted 22 bonus respect/exp. perhaps the winners should receive a 2x multiplier to their rewards if the raid had a large number of participants.

      here's what i imagine the start and ending announcements should look like:
      "Lockdown: Cops Are Permitted to Kill on Sight. PD Vault Enabled."
      "Rebels Win 100 - 50: Lockdown Over. PD Vault Disabled."
      "Cops Win 50 - 100: Lockdown Over. PD Vault Disabled."
      "Lockdown Over. PD Vault Disabled." (this occurs when cops win by running the timer)

      "Rebels Captured the Vault: Lockdown Over. PD Vault Disabled."
      "Cops Secured the Vault: Lockdown Over. PD Vault Disabled."

      obviously the vault related parts would be removed if the whole vault idea is problematic.

      here's some more addons:
      /lockdownstats could display stuff like who had the most kills/deaths on each team, who gained the most respect/cop exp, which rebels captured the pd vault or which cops secured it, etc. for the most recent lockdown event.

      here's some concerns:
      the pd needs to have good cop spawns. i also appreciate maps with large pd doors like freeman city. uptown is a poor map for pd raids due to its small entrances and lack of alternative routes.

      gang raid / war
      in a similar light to the pd raid concept, we could go a step further and implement a similar system to gang warfare. a gang could request to battle with another gang. if they accept, an announcement is made along the lines of "<gang name> Declared War On <rival gang name>". perhaps it could be forced rather than requested. anyways, in such a battle, the biggest loss is missing out on the potential rewards and ultimately making the rival gang even stronger. this whole idea mirrors the pd raid idea, where rebels are simply one gang and cops are another. a key difference is both gangs could potentially own their own vault up for capture. that would mean that gang vaults would be safe outside of declared war, which is a solid way of balancing the integrity of such a system. again, either gang would win via points or vault capture/securement, that is up for discussion. some more key differences would be that the capturers of a vault take it all and are not rewarded randomly generated cash/items. successfully capturing a vault could also negatively impact the individual respect or gang-treasury respect of the opposing gang or its members. after thinking it through, i think stealing a vault's wealth is as significant as the downside needs to be. in other words, no gang disbanding needs to occur when a vault is captured, it's punishment enough if you've got a lot to lose.

      anyways, similar to the pd raid addon ideas, /warstats could display the exact same sort of things, including if any gang's vault was captured/secured during the war.

      here's some concerns:
      i am concerned of the idea of two gangs abusing this mechanic to funnel large amounts of respect to individual players. some ways to circumvent this: people should have a duty to report such misbehavior. perhaps a gang must reach a certain level of prominence via wealth or total respect across all members to be eligible to accept/declare war against other gangs.

      bank heists
      this one requires vaults unlike the other two ideas. with two cops on, a vault prop inside the bank is enabled. during a bank heist and for a few minutes after, bankers are disabled and will not store money. you'll have to run off and store your stolen cash in your personal vaults / safes and wait until the event ends if you want to store it in the bank. during a heist, cops are allowed to kill any rebels inside the bank on sight. the bank vault takes 5 mins to open and requires rebels to be in the bank to keep progressing the opening. perhaps lockpicking the vault could speed up the process. the reward for opening the vault would obviously be large sums of money. when a rebel interacts with the vault, the event starts, indicated by a global announcement like "Bank Vault is Under Attack" and ending with either "Bank Vault Captured by the Rebels" or "Bank Vault Secured by the Police". rebels who interacted with the vault could have their crime drastically increase over time while still alive and at the bank. cops who secure the vault from capture could receive something like 25 bonus exp.