there's something causing a declension. something eating away at the essence of this game. something turning its gameplay into a parody of what it once was. now I have no doubt that not everyone values the same atmosphere that I do. what do you suppose the point of the game is anyways? to stack bread? to gang it up? to maximize drip? my best answer is to enjoy a worthwhile journey. but over the past few years, that enjoyment has been fading off into the distance. we have lost touch with that journey. money is of little struggle. acts of selfishness get you outcasted by society. cops basically let you kill them then cuff-release you as long as you play along to their exp farming schemes. the sadistic nature of this game has been dethroned by friendship and kindness. fuck that. even though the community has been becoming increasingly enclosed over the years (meaning those who still remain tend to be friends with one another), you'll just have to trust me on this. we can still fuck each other over and enjoy it too. my recent suggestions are, fundamentally, grand attempts to facilitate this essential chaos. anyways, here are my observations on what's been going on:
the rat race has ended (and nobody won)
it's like the crabs in the bucket have all decided to truce. nonsense I tell you. dailies, specifically lottery tickets, are too rewarding. antlion guards and zombie apocalypses are too generous. wages literally generate inflation, but they've always existed so whatever. overall, the effects of these wealth surpluses trickle down into most aspects of this game. there is insufficient incentive to rob another player of their hard-grown weed. why risk chronic animosity over a measly few thousand dollars? from my experience, people tend to overvalue living (as if they ain't gonna respawn a half-second later), so there is an opportunity cost to killing players: the price of neutrality. anyways, I think this game needs to re-value grinding over probabilistic prizes. I was reading some of my old suggestions on the topic of dailies and even back then it did not take me long to realize that they were actually a bad idea. it was too late though, it was in the game and everyone seemed to be intoxicated with the new and ez ways to make money. I'll draw out the problem for you guys: imagine two players, player 1 spends 5 hours growing and selling drugs, and in the process, has to avoid cops and rebels that are looking to intercept them. player 2 uses /dailies, gets pennypicker IV, completes it in 30 minutes, gets a master lottery ticket, uses it, gains a quarter of a million dollars, gg ez. but who cares more about their wealth? who had to face a struggle? player 1 is in the mindset of finding ways to get ahead of the grind (usually at the expense of players). player 2 is waiting for another easy and safe daily. in these scenarios, player 2 would not only miss out on the journey that player 1 would endure (and enjoy), but player 2 would RUIN the journey as a whole by devaluing any would-be player 1s' struggle. now I don't mean to give too much credit to player 2, they're just playing the game as it's intended. but this problem surely exists and it surely takes away the long-lost atmosphere of old-school RP.
the endeavor to earn respect/cop exp is too basic
always has been, no variety to be found, it's underdeveloped. a cop's job is primarily to be killed. I've produced no shortage of suggestions to fix this as of late, but I'll explain exactly why I think it matters so much. the prominence of gangs and their existence as a non-abstract enterprise (as they have historically been) pushes respect to the forefront of shit to do in this game. everyone and their mom is in a gang nowadays and so tens of thousands of respect points are needed if even only a few are to reach the highest of gang ranks. what does that mean exactly? well, it means a sad bunch of cops must die tens of thousands of times (we all prefer killing cops over other players to farm respect after all). gang members are now just glorified cop killers. this means we rarely get to see gangs operating massive drug operations, which means we rarely get to see the efforts of cops and rebels alike trying to break into gang bases to retrieve their riches. this is disappointing, this was my favorite occurrence in this game. but the arrows leading players to play the game a certain way no longer point in this direction. they instead lead players to be friendly and lazy. I've also tried to work out ways to make pd raids great again, some of it is map-dependent as the size and location of the pd is non-trivial. most of it has to deal with player temperament, which I suppose is mostly forged by the system. as of late, the cops I kill for respect practically let me kill them. I don't blame them either, it's not like this hasn't happened in the distant past either. the way the system works basically encourages them to. the meta for cops has always been cuff-release and I've never liked it. shorten jail time for low crime arrests to only a few seconds and increase the respect penalty. prevent cops from releasing players via menu. raise the minimum bribe amount. make a higher crime level grant more respect per kill. let's not keep the optimal path to gaining respect/cop exp be an unintuitive parody of meaningful action.
fun occurrences are being deprived of their essential reason
break-ins, break-outs, the sentiment of war, it's all missing. like I mentioned above, it's been a long time since I've seen coordinated efforts to bust into someone's safe space. I've never been too keen on the idea of locks as a whole. think about it, if you own a house with 3 doors and a fence maze that gives you the upper hand, then it's already a pain in the ass to break into. add locks, and now who would spend money for ass pain? I've thought about ideas like lock limits or making lockbreakers cheaper, or blowtorches (before they were added). none of these ideas are good enough. in the past, the standard method for taking down a drug operation was to just let a cop kick the doors down and work with them to get inside (then take them out of the equation). that's still technically the case, but you just never see it happen because who does mass drug runs anymore. my point is, this sort of high-risk high-reward sort of gameplay is becoming extinct. what a shame. my fancy suggestions attempted to avoid the removal of popular (and lazy) wealth accruement like dailies via an entire paradigm shift. the shift was intended to make personal wealth far more volatile, so while it remains easy to get, it now becomes easy to lose as well. alas, the ideas are overly complex and an easier solution would probably be along the lines of omission rather than addition. nerf ez money and pray that the problems sort themselves out. maybe even nudge players into war-like behavior to stir the homogenized pot by incentivizing break-ins as daily missions. give money more meaning. one thing I never understood is why admins kept house prices relatively the same over the years, yet methods of income kept growing. to me, a big base should only be acquired once a gang has worked together to pool enough money to buy it before another gang can. a big base is an end-game accomplishment, not something reached right out the gates of an econ reset. td;lr, reshape dailies to be more challenging if they are to keep their rewards. make the economy a struggling economy, not a why-bother-just-pray-to-RNGesus economy. keep players hungry for more.
I'll stop there. and who knows, maybe HL2:DM RP has transformed beyond repair, or worse, beyond the desire to repair. maybe everyone just prefers the way things are and I'm living off nostalgia that nobody else shares. it could be worse. thanks for reading.
EDIT: here's some links to my greatest works of the past
The Gang
Remove dailies
the rat race has ended (and nobody won)
it's like the crabs in the bucket have all decided to truce. nonsense I tell you. dailies, specifically lottery tickets, are too rewarding. antlion guards and zombie apocalypses are too generous. wages literally generate inflation, but they've always existed so whatever. overall, the effects of these wealth surpluses trickle down into most aspects of this game. there is insufficient incentive to rob another player of their hard-grown weed. why risk chronic animosity over a measly few thousand dollars? from my experience, people tend to overvalue living (as if they ain't gonna respawn a half-second later), so there is an opportunity cost to killing players: the price of neutrality. anyways, I think this game needs to re-value grinding over probabilistic prizes. I was reading some of my old suggestions on the topic of dailies and even back then it did not take me long to realize that they were actually a bad idea. it was too late though, it was in the game and everyone seemed to be intoxicated with the new and ez ways to make money. I'll draw out the problem for you guys: imagine two players, player 1 spends 5 hours growing and selling drugs, and in the process, has to avoid cops and rebels that are looking to intercept them. player 2 uses /dailies, gets pennypicker IV, completes it in 30 minutes, gets a master lottery ticket, uses it, gains a quarter of a million dollars, gg ez. but who cares more about their wealth? who had to face a struggle? player 1 is in the mindset of finding ways to get ahead of the grind (usually at the expense of players). player 2 is waiting for another easy and safe daily. in these scenarios, player 2 would not only miss out on the journey that player 1 would endure (and enjoy), but player 2 would RUIN the journey as a whole by devaluing any would-be player 1s' struggle. now I don't mean to give too much credit to player 2, they're just playing the game as it's intended. but this problem surely exists and it surely takes away the long-lost atmosphere of old-school RP.
the endeavor to earn respect/cop exp is too basic
always has been, no variety to be found, it's underdeveloped. a cop's job is primarily to be killed. I've produced no shortage of suggestions to fix this as of late, but I'll explain exactly why I think it matters so much. the prominence of gangs and their existence as a non-abstract enterprise (as they have historically been) pushes respect to the forefront of shit to do in this game. everyone and their mom is in a gang nowadays and so tens of thousands of respect points are needed if even only a few are to reach the highest of gang ranks. what does that mean exactly? well, it means a sad bunch of cops must die tens of thousands of times (we all prefer killing cops over other players to farm respect after all). gang members are now just glorified cop killers. this means we rarely get to see gangs operating massive drug operations, which means we rarely get to see the efforts of cops and rebels alike trying to break into gang bases to retrieve their riches. this is disappointing, this was my favorite occurrence in this game. but the arrows leading players to play the game a certain way no longer point in this direction. they instead lead players to be friendly and lazy. I've also tried to work out ways to make pd raids great again, some of it is map-dependent as the size and location of the pd is non-trivial. most of it has to deal with player temperament, which I suppose is mostly forged by the system. as of late, the cops I kill for respect practically let me kill them. I don't blame them either, it's not like this hasn't happened in the distant past either. the way the system works basically encourages them to. the meta for cops has always been cuff-release and I've never liked it. shorten jail time for low crime arrests to only a few seconds and increase the respect penalty. prevent cops from releasing players via menu. raise the minimum bribe amount. make a higher crime level grant more respect per kill. let's not keep the optimal path to gaining respect/cop exp be an unintuitive parody of meaningful action.
fun occurrences are being deprived of their essential reason
break-ins, break-outs, the sentiment of war, it's all missing. like I mentioned above, it's been a long time since I've seen coordinated efforts to bust into someone's safe space. I've never been too keen on the idea of locks as a whole. think about it, if you own a house with 3 doors and a fence maze that gives you the upper hand, then it's already a pain in the ass to break into. add locks, and now who would spend money for ass pain? I've thought about ideas like lock limits or making lockbreakers cheaper, or blowtorches (before they were added). none of these ideas are good enough. in the past, the standard method for taking down a drug operation was to just let a cop kick the doors down and work with them to get inside (then take them out of the equation). that's still technically the case, but you just never see it happen because who does mass drug runs anymore. my point is, this sort of high-risk high-reward sort of gameplay is becoming extinct. what a shame. my fancy suggestions attempted to avoid the removal of popular (and lazy) wealth accruement like dailies via an entire paradigm shift. the shift was intended to make personal wealth far more volatile, so while it remains easy to get, it now becomes easy to lose as well. alas, the ideas are overly complex and an easier solution would probably be along the lines of omission rather than addition. nerf ez money and pray that the problems sort themselves out. maybe even nudge players into war-like behavior to stir the homogenized pot by incentivizing break-ins as daily missions. give money more meaning. one thing I never understood is why admins kept house prices relatively the same over the years, yet methods of income kept growing. to me, a big base should only be acquired once a gang has worked together to pool enough money to buy it before another gang can. a big base is an end-game accomplishment, not something reached right out the gates of an econ reset. td;lr, reshape dailies to be more challenging if they are to keep their rewards. make the economy a struggling economy, not a why-bother-just-pray-to-RNGesus economy. keep players hungry for more.
I'll stop there. and who knows, maybe HL2:DM RP has transformed beyond repair, or worse, beyond the desire to repair. maybe everyone just prefers the way things are and I'm living off nostalgia that nobody else shares. it could be worse. thanks for reading.
EDIT: here's some links to my greatest works of the past
The Gang
Remove dailies