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