Is SCPRP Drifting Too Far Towards Combat?

[Lil Walter]

I have been noticing a trend in all the updates of the server and the gameplay loop in itself, everything feels geared to pure combat now. Research as a department is one if not the smallest department in terms of activity on a daily basis. I cant help but feel that is due to multiple factors.

- There is just too many breaches & CI raids happening too frequently and in such quick succession. People do say that if its a localised breach it shouldn't halt RP and testing in other areas, but most times that is not the case as you have guards and combatives all ordering people to flee unnecessarily, or closing breach doors etc.

- The ethos of the server has been molded due to the devs attention to combative systems, it does seems more and more often that mechanics geared towards combat and on occasion taken from MRP and being brought into SCPRP.

Now I wanted to look into this further to see if this was just a player base mentality or the development changes themselves that target this. Here is the data for this year going through the Discord changelog.

OVERALL UPDATE BREAKDOWN

Category	Total updates	Share
Combat / CI / SCP-breach focused	138	63.9%
RP-supporting updates	54	25.0%
Neutral / QoL / admin / performance	24	11.1%
Total substantive updates	216	100%

MONTHLY BREAKDOWN

Month	Total Updates	Combat / CI / Breach	RP Supporting	Neutral / QoL
January	65	39	20	6
February	49	29	14	6
March	54	40	7	7
April	48	30	13	5
Total	216	138	54	24

MONTHLY PERCENTAGES

Month	Combat / CI / Breach	RP Supporting	Neutral / QoL
January	60.0%	30.8%	9.2%
February	59.2%	28.6%	12.2%
March	74.0%	13.0%	13.0%
March	62.5%	27.1%	10.4%
Total	63.9%	25.0%	11.1%

If you remove neutral / QoL, and comparing combat focused updates directly against RP Supporting updates, the split is roughly:
72% combat-focused vs 28% RP-supporting
That is about 2.6 combat updates for every 1 RP update.

I would like to say is that this is in no way meant to be a dig at the development team. One thing I can take away from this is the staggering amount of updates we do get! What I hope this can achieve is to show that it may be time to switch gears and pay a bit more attention on the RP aspect of this server, as that should be main priority. I am sure that if the dev team were to work with RP departments and have open discussions on what improvements can be made, we could see a real positive change happen for the server. I would love to know what everyone else thinks about this aswell.

 

[King Julien]

This is my Site Advisor..... The truth has set him free

The only thing you would need to do is show us how many of the combat updates were buffs or nerfs.

 

[Broda]

Now this is stat graft, but really good to see it broken down like this.

I would say, combat adjustments are a LOT more easier to implement like balance changes or new loadouts etc as thats all done via ingame vwar functions where as RP stuff etc would probably need fresh content etc

 

[Yeke]

The biggest issue in deciding on content is it is harder to come up with ideas for RP content, as RP is player lead, as such coming up with content that doesnt just become "one and done" is very difficult and often times cumbersome.

I do agree there should be more RP updates, but the question is honestly "What do you want" and half the time we ask, we end up with crickets screeching back at us, which is frustrating from a management perspective.

The main thing we do try to do is make it so there is interlacing requirements to work with other departments, however every time we try this, players do what they do best and isolate and gatekeep, for example: Chemicals, the envisionment was that Research would get chemical and sell them to other regiments as and when needed and complete work orders and do sampling on behalf, however instead what happened; Every regiment and department jumped in, made their own "subregiments" and removed that loop and whenever we try to enforce it we are met with the biggest pushback

I am all for ideas and sometimes the "RP" updates come in forms of combat updates too, as they both interlink as much as people hate that idea.

 

[William 'Bubbles' Jacobs]

Speaking as someone who only plays research it is incredibly frustrating during peak hours to try and get a piece of research done, especially something that isnt just making a d-class do something that lasts 2 seconds. We have a CI raid, then we get a double breach, Then a CI raid and rinse and repeat. I understand that there isnt alot that can be done about this and that it is part of the server but when you spend hours waiting to do a test which lasts 15 minutes it feels frustrating.

In terms of things that could be added this is where its difficult, I personally love when we get events where a new anomaly comes on site and we have to research into it. Those are my favourite events and I love getting in the middle of it. There is always an option of rotating some inanimate SCPs for newer ones even just for a short period of time to encourrage people to test on them. I would always love having a new animate SCP any day of the week but I would never put that on the dev team who are already working very hard.

At the end of the day people do like the combat aspect and I would never get in the way of that and there isnt really a way to limit the combat without making them feel frustrated too but you can never make everyone happy

 

[MrSiens]

The problem is that GMod is fundamentally built on a shooter. Every part of this game is made to drive you towards shooting someone, every feature that is not shooting people is just not what the game is built for, and you can tell. Thats just a consequence of Gmod being Gmod, no server can escape the fact that the primary way to interact with something is a gun.

Many Gmod roleplay servers work this into their design, HL2 RP comes to mind, where the struggle between Combine and Rebels is reflected not just in roleplay but in gameplay, with Rebels having to scrounge up resources over long periods of time to strike back against the more powerful Combine attempting to curb this. Fallout Servers do the same in which they tell a story of power struggles and resource scarcity by having the same factions compete for finite resources and territory. Gameplay informs roleplay.

But even there, the Roleplay is often secondary to the combat, this is just an inherint issue with GMod.

The other half is culture, people play optimally, roleplaying along with people is not incentivised. Why would you let a CI deep cover pass an ID check when he wont do anything interesting besides shoot you in the back? Why would you not permanently close all HCZ blast doors if the consequence of not doing it is another 3 Hour long breach?

Its a thing where neither party is willing to let the other take advantage of you. This is not always wrong, for every D-Class who might do something interesting with an escape attempt, we have 99 who simply bumrush 914 (because otherwise they will get gunned down by an MTF bored out of his mind glad to have something he can shoot). People do not trust that the other person will play along or do anything interesting. You can observe this best with GOC, in a million different ways.

Development wise, I think combat changes are fine and have been immensely helpful for reducing the combat temperature on the server, and shifting the balance of power. Reducing breaches gives more breathing room for Noncombatives, even if playing as an SCP is miserable and boring. As much as i would WANT more "toys" for the roleplay sandbox to interact with, experience tells me that they would simply go unused as of current.

The main thing we do try to do is make it so there is interlacing requirements to work with other departments, however every time we try this, players do what they do best and isolate and gatekeep, for example: Chemicals, the envisionment was that Research would get chemical and sell them to other regiments as and when needed and complete work orders and do sampling on behalf, however instead what happened; Every regiment and department jumped in, made their own "subregiments" and removed that loop and whenever we try to enforce it we are met with the biggest pushback

"Players will optimize the fun out of a game if you let them"
People were too lost in the sauce of "speed up combat good" to realise that hashing out deals with research would be more fun and interesting for all parties involved.

 

[Avery Snow]

Rant and Complaining:
I am frustrated with the amount of combat. The current loop is not what I'd like to see.
RP is interrupted more often than not, either by a breach or CI or both. This makes things very frustrating.

It doesn't help that suggestions that would add content that seemingly would contribute positively to fixing this issue often get denied.
It really feels like combat players are catered to while RP gets scraps. It may not be the case, but as someone who isn't part of the staff team, that's what it looks like.


All of this leads to a high level of frustration. RP is on a short timer. And makes it not enjoyable. If you have to rush your RP, it kills quality.

Medical RP is completely dead. (Although that is mostly a player problem, many would rather just carry cough syrup instead of interacting with a doctor)
Research is suffering, not being able to do large scale testing like they used to (outside of events where raiding and breaching is paused.)
ISD is also affected, People don't want to evacuate during codes (It's boring to evacuate to be fair) , Investigations get interrupted by codes. Leading to most ISD players just fighting the breach.

SCPs, The core of the server are in a bad spot too, They breach too often and are too weak when they breach. Leading to recontainmet efforts being very repetitive (Shoot SCP, die, respawn, shoot SCP) 106,96,79 are the only ones that are not in this loop.

Even with these issues, CN still manges to be the best on the market for SCP-RP.


I am holding out so much hope for Site-9, But I'd much rather have the currently existing server be better instead of a separate experience.

 

[Alex Redmont]

Speaking as someone who only plays research it is incredibly frustrating during peak hours to try and get a piece of research done, especially something that isnt just making a d-class do something that lasts 2 seconds. We have a CI raid, then we get a double breach, Then a CI raid and rinse and repeat. I understand that there isnt alot that can be done about this and that it is part of the server but when you spend hours waiting to do a test which lasts 15 minutes it feels frustrating.

In terms of things that could be added this is where its difficult, I personally love when we get events where a new anomaly comes on site and we have to research into it. Those are my favourite events and I love getting in the middle of it. There is always an option of rotating some inanimate SCPs for newer ones even just for a short period of time to encourrage people to test on them. I would always love having a new animate SCP any day of the week but I would never put that on the dev team who are already working very hard.

At the end of the day people do like the combat aspect and I would never get in the way of that and there isnt really a way to limit the combat without making them feel frustrated too but you can never make everyone happy

Chaos Insurgency as a faction needs to be made far weaker.

There is no reason for CI (Which, in widely-accepted lore, isn't THAT powerful) to be as strong as they are right now.
They're strong, sure, but this mostly comes from their great infiltration skills. The Chaos Insurgency we have on the server is practically a militia which can for some reason combat a Foundation site right next door. A Foundation site that houses 4 different MTF's and both branches of Foundation Command, mind you. There is no reason that CI should even be competing in a direct firefight against Foundation forces, yet you see CI raids steamroll their way through every 45 minutes because the server is geared towards quick, dopamine-injecting combat for CI combat mains and MTF combat mains. This isn't inherently bad on its own; it is however a shame that CI being so powerful directly harms every roleplay-based department on the server.

Ideally in my mind, a full-scale CI raid should have trouble fighting just Nu-7. Nu-7 is meant to be the guys you call in when a Foundation site is under attack from intruders; why are they struggling against a small localized CI cell?

 

[Betriv]

Chaos Insurgency as a faction needs to be made far weaker.

There is no reason for CI (Which, in widely-accepted lore, isn't THAT powerful) to be as strong as they are right now.
They're strong, sure, but this mostly comes from their great infiltration skills. The Chaos Insurgency we have on the server is practically a militia which can for some reason combat a Foundation site right next door. A Foundation site that houses 4 different MTF's and both branches of Foundation Command, mind you. There is no reason that CI should even be competing in a direct firefight against Foundation forces, yet you see CI raids steamroll their way through every 45 minutes because the server is geared towards quick, dopamine-injecting combat for CI combat mains and MTF combat mains. This isn't inherently bad on its own; it is however a shame that CI being so powerful directly harms every roleplay-based department on the server.

Ideally in my mind, a full-scale CI raid should have trouble fighting just Nu-7. Nu-7 is meant to be the guys you call in when a Foundation site is under attack from intruders; why are they struggling against a small localized CI cell?

if ci was that weak then no one would want to play it

 

[Avery Snow]

Chaos Insurgency as a faction needs to be made far weaker.

There is no reason for CI (Which, in widely-accepted lore, isn't THAT powerful) to be as strong as they are right now.
They're strong, sure, but this mostly comes from their great infiltration skills. The Chaos Insurgency we have on the server is practically a militia which can for some reason combat a Foundation site right next door. A Foundation site that houses 4 different MTF's and both branches of Foundation Command, mind you. There is no reason that CI should even be competing in a direct firefight against Foundation forces, yet you see CI raids steamroll their way through every 45 minutes because the server is geared towards quick, dopamine-injecting combat for CI combat mains and MTF combat mains. This isn't inherently bad on its own; it is however a shame that CI being so powerful directly harms every roleplay-based department on the server.

Ideally in my mind, a full-scale CI raid should have trouble fighting just Nu-7. Nu-7 is meant to be the guys you call in when a Foundation site is under attack from intruders; why are they struggling against a small localized CI cell?

Very good point.
Insurgency is in the name. Yet they are basically a army. An army that is bigger than the UN in the region.
I would expect infiltration and espionage, and while it happens, it's almost always direct military conflict.

 

[Snake]

Something to be mindful of is the context surrounding statistics. For example, what counts as an update? If a senior admin changing weapon stats, or giving a job a different weapon is considered an update, then the number will be greatly increased because of how easy this is to do. By comparison Kluas GOC update was quite large and very time consuming however would it be counted the same? Another thing to think about is combat balance often requires a lot of down the line tweaking as it is not always possible to nail the balance first time so one combat update might end up being counted as 2 or 3 because of balancing changes. Ease of making a change is a big factor in how likely it is to occur, something a senior admin can change is a lot easier and more simple than a major update. A lot of major updates require a core developer, or not insignificant assistant from a core developer due to how access to various addons is managed alongside the fact it all require PRs which can only be done by Senior Devs of which up until a couple days ago there were only 3 (4 if you include ventz) and many of which have work, school or their own projects to do alongside that.
I want to make it clear I am not necessarily contesting this, I am just trying to give proper context as by itself the statistics presented could be potentially misleading because of the lack of context on methodology and how they are categorised and counted

 

[Snake]

Chaos Insurgency as a faction needs to be made far weaker.

There is no reason for CI (Which, in widely-accepted lore, isn't THAT powerful) to be as strong as they are right now.
They're strong, sure, but this mostly comes from their great infiltration skills. The Chaos Insurgency we have on the server is practically a militia which can for some reason combat a Foundation site right next door. A Foundation site that houses 4 different MTF's and both branches of Foundation Command, mind you. There is no reason that CI should even be competing in a direct firefight against Foundation forces, yet you see CI raids steamroll their way through every 45 minutes because the server is geared towards quick, dopamine-injecting combat for CI combat mains and MTF combat mains. This isn't inherently bad on its own; it is however a shame that CI being so powerful directly harms every roleplay-based department on the server.

Ideally in my mind, a full-scale CI raid should have trouble fighting just Nu-7. Nu-7 is meant to be the guys you call in when a Foundation site is under attack from intruders; why are they struggling against a small localized CI cell?

this is lowkey a skill issue E11 and AO weapons are way better than most CI ones

 

[UNGOC Starfox / Walter]

Something to be mindful of is the context surrounding statistics. For example, what counts as an update? If a senior admin changing weapon stats, or giving a job a different weapon is considered an update, then the number will be greatly increased because of how easy this is to do. By comparison Kluas GOC update was quite large and very time consuming however would it be counted the same?

Another thing to consider is that some combat updates still benefit Rp.

Like for instance. The GOCs Bronze and Red suits add potential for specialised testing, and the Grey suit adds Infiltration RP.

 

[Auburn]

As someone who is heavily involved in the development and content side of the server, I can give firsthand testimony that a large percentage of combat changes, breach changes, and balance changes are made in an attempt to fix an unenjoyable gameplay interaction or in many cases actually reduce the amount of strain combat causes on players.

Take the breach changes a few months ago. We made breaches more frequent and smaller scale. Why? Because bigger breaches are much worse to deal with than smaller ones that happen more often. E-11 can clean up a Solo-912 breach in 5 minutes. That gives much longer downtime for roleplay to happen.

You can also look at the SCP Hack Delays, forcing CI to push through the Foundation players holding outside the CC. It gives foundation the defenders advantage and means its more likely for the raid to get halted before it snowballs into a larger breach.

I can't really take the numbers cited in your post at face value as I could put out 15 "combat changes" that are effectively editing 3 lines of code each. That doesnt compare to something like @Icarus 's GMObjectives update which completely changed the game for our Event Team. It also doesnt hold a candle to the Mesh Editor update Ventz is working on, which will be another massive game changer for events and RP.

I have always taken the stance that Small Updates made often build trust with the community, because it shows the players that there is work being made to improve the state of the server. Radio silence for 3 months in between major updates makes people think the team working on the server have jumped ship, which is never the case. It just happens to be that the "combat updates" are usually both the easiest changes to make and the most urgently needed.

 

[Avery Snow]

As someone who is heavily involved in the development and content side of the server, I can give firsthand testimony that a large percentage of combat changes, breach changes, and balance changes are made in an attempt to fix an unenjoyable gameplay interaction or in many cases actually reduce the amount of strain combat causes on players.

Take the breach changes a few months ago. We made breaches more frequent and smaller scale. Why? Because bigger breaches are much worse to deal with than smaller ones that happen more often. E-11 can clean up a Solo-912 breach in 5 minutes. That gives much longer downtime for roleplay to happen.

You can also look at the SCP Hack Delays, forcing CI to push through the Foundation players holding outside the CC. It gives foundation the defenders advantage and means its more likely for the raid to get halted before it snowballs into a larger breach.

I can't really take the numbers cited in your post at face value as I could put out 15 "combat changes" that are effectively editing 3 lines of code each. That doesnt compare to something like @Icarus 's GMObjectives update which completely changed the game for our Event Team. It also doesnt hold a candle to the Mesh Editor update Ventz is working on, which will be another massive game changer for events and RP.

I have always taken the stance that Small Updates made often build trust with the community, because it shows the players that there is work being made to improve the state of the server. Radio silence for 3 months in between major updates makes people think the team working on the server have jumped ship, which is never the case. It just happens to be that the "combat updates" are usually both the easiest changes to make and the most urgently needed.

I completely agree that numbers alone are flawed, since even the smallest of changes can count. A person cannot reasonably focus on that alone.
However, as a player, it certainly feels like it's more combat focused than before. And the breach change from a few months ago that you mentioned contributes to that feeling, While they are short, leading to more downtime compared to the larger breaches, the higher frequency causes more roleplay interruptions, making the experience for myself worse.

That's the big issue for myself, Getting interrupted in RP by things outside of reasonable control, Both CI and SCPs. I'm okay waiting longer for a breach to clear up, so long as interruptions are way less likely.

 

[Lil Walter]

I have gone through the data again, filtering out anything that isn't an actual addition of a new system, item etc.

ADDITION UPDATES

Addition Type	Count	Share
Combat / CI / SCP-breach additions	32	50.8%
RP-supporting additions	24	38.1%
Neutral / utility additions	7	11.1%
Total additions	63	100%

MONTHLY BREAKDOWN

Month	Total Additions	Combat Additions	RP Additions	Neutral Additions
January	22	10	9	3
February	14	6	6	2
March	13	10	2	1
April	14	6	7	1
Total	63	32	24	7

With these numbers, you are still left with roughly:
57% combat-focused vs 43% RP-supporting.
Definitely not as drastic as before, but honestly its still a concerning statistic. It still does show a favour to the combat of the server.
After reading through everyone's arguments it is actually really encouraging that the want for improvement is there.

Take the breach changes a few months ago. We made breaches more frequent and smaller scale.

I honestly believe this has been one of the most detrimental changes to the server in terms of RP encouragement. I think alot of people will agree that the short downtime for breaches has led to long term RP being borderline impossible to pull off. Now what you have is CI mains hopping on SCPs and breaching, whilst often times you see CI raids in conjunction to these breaches or happening in between these short gaps of breaches. Or, even that a small breach is causing the entire site to come to a standstill as people disregard where the breach is and shutdown all testing etc. I again think this is a very common sentiment shared by a majority of people.

I do agree there should be more RP updates, but the question is honestly "What do you want" and half the time we ask, we end up with crickets screeching back at us, which is frustrating from a management perspective.

I completely agree, I have seen the threads where the offer is there yet people do little to work with it. I myself am gonna start pushing for RSD, Medical etc to put forward their wants and ideas. I hope management will be receptive to them if we do achieve some communication.

The problem is that GMod is fundamentally built on a shooter. Every part of this game is made to drive you towards shooting someone, every feature that is not shooting people is just not what the game is built for, and you can tell. Thats just a consequence of Gmod being Gmod, no server can escape the fact that the primary way to interact with something is a gun.

This is just frankly disagree with. This is down to personal taste and mentality. Gmod whilst built as a HL2 mod which in itself is an extremely story driven game with shooting mechanics, is definitely not intended to be a shooter.

 

[Cheetah]

Ventz is cooking up one of the craziest addons I have seen on any GMOD server, something that looks like it shouldn't even be possible in GMOD. The said addition will be completely game-changing for Staff and GMs on the server, in turn drastically increasing RP Quality / Event Quality in itself.

But I suppose I do see the point. The number of additions to the server that increase the "normal player's" RP experience and ability is minimal. But that is also not something that is easy to add, as the RP and RP Quality are mainly player-dependent. Good Roleplayers can perform and create amazing roleplay experiences with a small amount of tools, while worse roleplayers may not be able to, and in turn easily transition to the combat system that is more linear.

 

[Yeke]

Chaos Insurgency as a faction needs to be made far weaker.

There is no reason for CI (Which, in widely-accepted lore, isn't THAT powerful) to be as strong as they are right now.
They're strong, sure, but this mostly comes from their great infiltration skills. The Chaos Insurgency we have on the server is practically a militia which can for some reason combat a Foundation site right next door. A Foundation site that houses 4 different MTF's and both branches of Foundation Command, mind you. There is no reason that CI should even be competing in a direct firefight against Foundation forces, yet you see CI raids steamroll their way through every 45 minutes because the server is geared towards quick, dopamine-injecting combat for CI combat mains and MTF combat mains. This isn't inherently bad on its own; it is however a shame that CI being so powerful directly harms every roleplay-based department on the server.

Ideally in my mind, a full-scale CI raid should have trouble fighting just Nu-7. Nu-7 is meant to be the guys you call in when a Foundation site is under attack from intruders; why are they struggling against a small localized CI cell?

I have to say this as blunt as it is, we have difference in efficacy on our servers for the fight against CI

U.S SOP are exceptionally effective with the exact same gear as the UK and frequently quash raids either before they enter the facility or at the entrance

U.K SOP sadly do not have the same effectiveness with the same gear as CI is very much exceptionally co-ordinated and a lot of the combat focused players go to CI, as such introducing a issue with capability and teamwork that isn't seen on the other server.

This has nothing to do with their guns, weapons etc, its purely tactical and player informed as much as players hate it, otherwise we would see the exact same issue on the U.S, we cannot balance an entire faction just because one server struggles to be effective,

the higher frequency causes more roleplay interruptions, making the experience for myself worse.

I am a bit at a loss how it causes more RP interruptions if they are dealt with rapidly, as you can still do testing in a C5 providing you are either within an SCP chamber and stay in place obviously or the SCP will find you and kill you or the SCP isn't in that sector i.e. a localised single breach in HCZ, would be easier to contain and thus allow people to continue research in LCZ - RP with respect doesn't have to come at a standstill, that is a huge player issue as I know a lot of people either; Gatekeep RP into CL4 zones (yes i know yall do this) or go AFK when a breach starts and acts like its the end of the world rather than just getting on with it, like who said for example Research RP has to stop, there's more than just testing ,you have discussing tests with other researchers, hypothesising etc, lectures etc.

I think half the issue is people just shut down and don't bother then they end up AFKing or larping on roblox way past the time the breach has been dealt with then go "UGH RP IS DEAD" then moan that a breach is out in 10 minutes but they've been larping on Roblox for an hour

I honestly believe this has been one of the most detrimental changes to the server in terms of RP encouragement. I think alot of people will agree that the short downtime for breaches has led to long term RP being borderline impossible to pull off. Now what you have is CI mains hopping on SCPs and breaching, whilst often times you see CI raids in conjunction to these breaches or happening in between these short gaps of breaches. Or, even that a small breach is causing the entire site to come to a standstill as people disregard where the breach is and shutdown all testing etc. I again think this is a very common sentiment shared by a majority of people.

Per my above comment to Avery, I do not understand how this is more detrimental having a short 15 minute breach that happens quickly compared to breaches that last an hour and often times due to poor response end up leading into another breach, of which we added breach calming measures such as;

- Reducing breaches being frequently double and triple breaches to a rare triple breach, frequent single breaches and less frequent double breaches thus reducing the amount of time SCPs are breached for wreaking havoc
- Breach queue pausing in a breach - During a breach we made the breach queue pause to preserver the state of the time after a breach

CI raids cannot be counted in the same measure as a lot of the issue with CI raids per my first comment in this reply, comparative to each server, there is a huge difference in skill level at fighting CI, US SOP beat CI most times and also they have further teamwork and support from A/O

UK on the other hand tends to not be as pro-active and this leads to CI speed running into the base and getting deeper before anyone realises (i.e. they follow the same route every time and no one target hardens their frequent raid locations then they go when CI do the same tactic every hour and get deep into site.

We cannot balance CI raids, because if we look at the US its done right, but UK it isnt and it really makes it impossible for us to provide any form of balancing for it.

The other thing is, as above, is testing actually shut down or are people shutting down and just assuming that nothings worth, then making it our problem rather than their own for example in the past CL5 use to have a mentality of "Ugh a breach, fuck this im going AFK" rather than yknow doing their role and working with MTFs and coordinating to resolve breaches sooner and it fits into part of the Site Command RP, I do think a lot of it is people who go " nah im not bothering" thus everyone feels there is no RP

But to wrap that off i do not understand how it works that we do things to reduce breach impacts etc, and then somehow they are still "awful" or "too impactful" on every change we have made, it does seem to me people want us to make breaches once a day, but then doing that, you will have 0 SCPs to rp with, or increase CI raid cooldown which in turn with harm their faction and then in turn harm Nu-7 and DEA

But I suppose I do see the point. The number of additions to the server that increase the "normal player's" RP experience and ability is minimal. But that is also not something that is easy to add, as the RP and RP Quality are mainly player-dependent. Good Roleplayers can perform and create amazing roleplay experiences with a small amount of tools, while worse roleplayers may not be able to, and in turn easily transition to the combat system that is more linear.

Also I do have to support cheetahs claim as we frequently do market research with other services to see how RP is handled and we have found that despite us having a lot of content, they have more RP with less, and we want more "to create RP" because "none is created" and it baffles me

But if yall have some good ideas for RP id love to hear them that come in the form of content

Edit: sorry if it comes off as dickish, im not very good with text tonality, however I want yall to know im interested in listening to you all but at the same time being management, I do see a lot others dont see and i do hope to inform you all of what we see daily

 

[Avery Snow]

I am a bit at a loss how it causes more RP interruptions if they are dealt with rapidly, as you can still do testing in a C5 providing you are either within an SCP chamber and stay in place obviously or the SCP will find you and kill you or the SCP isn't in that sector i.e. a localised single breach in HCZ, would be easier to contain and thus allow people to continue research in LCZ - RP with respect doesn't have to come at a standstill, that is a huge player issue as I know a lot of people either; Gatekeep RP into CL4 zones (yes i know yall do this) or go AFK when a breach starts and acts like its the end of the world rather than just getting on with it, like who said for example Research RP has to stop, there's more than just testing ,you have discussing tests with other researchers, hypothesising etc, lectures etc.

I think half the issue is people just shut down and don't bother then they end up AFKing or larping on roblox way past the time the breach has been dealt with then go "UGH RP IS DEAD" then moan that a breach is out in 10 minutes but they've been larping on Roblox for an hour

I appreciate the reply. I'm not sure on how to best explain this, but I'll try. You are correct that you are supposed to be able to do testing during a code, However with how things are on US (Not sure about UK) you can't, If a breach happens your escort 9 times out of 10 decides to take the D class back to D-Block, even if it would be safer to stay, I'm not sure why they do this, but it happens so often. That stops the test.
Plus, getting D class out during a code isn't possible, As GSD leaves D block to fight the code. They are not all supposed to as there is a minimum staffing requirement. But that's how it is. I've talked to CL4 GSD and they seem apathetic.

Now that I type out my issue, It seems to be a GSD issue that is made worse by there being more breaches.


Other roleplay getting interrupted is also dependent on what breaches, For example, I was questioning a person in interrogation about a incident, A small breach happened, and it was 106 who teleported into the room and grabbed us both, I escaped, and so did the other person, but they were stuck on top of vents.


With the larger, less frequent breaches, After one concludes, I know that I have a few hours to do what I need to do with little chance of death.
With the short ones, I don't know when the next one is, especially with breach votes.

I don't know the numbers, All I know is how the game feels now instead of what it used to feel like. And it feels worse on the roleplay side of things. And the breach frequency change is the time where it started getting worse IMO.

The gatekeeping of RP behind CL4 is also a big issue. I'm not CL4, Do to IRL, I'm not able to be consistently active like is required to hold CL4. I know I'm missing out on quite a bit by not doing so.

 

[Auburn]

That's the big issue for myself, Getting interrupted in RP by things outside of reasonable control, Both CI and SCPs. I'm okay waiting longer for a breach to clear up, so long as interruptions are way less likely.

We found that a lot of the time when a breach looks like its going to last a while, Roleplay focused players will either go completely AFK or disconnect from the server. A shorter breach more frequently means, yes, your RP may get interrupted more frequently, but that interruption will be smaller scale and/or have a much lower chance of impacting you.

Take a tribunal in the old system. A large breach would either require the entire roleplay scenario be cancelled or postponed for up to/exceeding an hour, or require SL intervention given one is available to put down shield walls. With smaller breaches, 049 would breach in Heavy alone and there's a good chance it wouldnt touch the tribunal in any way, shape, or form.

We've also made a multitude of other changes over the last year to reduce the interruption that the *necessary* combative side of the server causes on the roleplay side. These two aspects of the server can very feasibly co-exist, and we've been working to enable that.

Some of these changes:

• Moving the Secondary turret to be infront of the Blast door, making it harder for SCPs to get out of heavy and into LCZ/PW (where most roleplay occurs).
• Adding a turret to medbay (and moving it around recently) in order to prevent a very roleplay focused area of the server from interruption by breached SCPs.
• The changes the Supers on UK were trialling with the 914 storage closet keypad, making it take longer for CI to get into HCZ through vents.
• Improvements to CCTV systems to make it easier for players to track CI raids, SCP breaches, etc. NLR means its easy to lose track of CI and SCPs during a site-wide code, and the cams allow someone to act as a global coordinator for the guys in site. This also gives roles like Assistants, Site Command, Site Admin, and ISD a way to contribute to Combat and Codes in a form that doesnt require them to join the run-shoot-die gameplay loop.
• Warfunds, as much as they offer combative items like tanks and bombs and everything else, were added in order to add avenues of roleplay for all 3 factions to participate in. It enhances hostage negotiation RP by adding a resource to trade that doesnt break the bank of every DEA CL4. It gives CI a raiding objective that isnt an SCP breach. It gives all factions a long-term resource to manage.

I could go on for hours, but I don't want this to become an essay.

I think theres a lot to take note of from your experience, as it could very well be that players who want to focus on both Combat and Roleplay suffer a lot more under the new system. The server is not split into Super Serious Roleplay LARPers and Call of Duty Multiplayer Enthusiasts, its a spectrum between those extremes and every player falls somewhere on that spectrum. We want to get the system to a point where everyone can enjoy their slice of the server. If your source of fun keeps getting cut off, crushed into a ball, and kicked into the nearest trash can, we can and will try to help fix that.