[MRP] Bring Back the Old Gameplay (Long Suggestion)

[Valkon]

What does this suggestion change/add/remove:

There are many different aspects of old MRP which should return to make the game more balanced and fairer for newer players.

Firstly, the old gun handling system should be reintroduced. Most weapons under this system were lasers, having essentially no spread and a reasonable amount of recoil. This afforded everyone a fair opportunity to fight at mid-long range and was the best solution against snipers back before MRP had sniper limits/pings. Infantry can also laser tail rotors off helicopters. Adding in this new weapon system essentially nerfed infantry and removed their counters to the things that killed them the most

Secondly, the old FOB system should be reintegrated into how FOBs work currently. At the moment, if a team has no FOBs there is little incentive to actively fight. Why should NCO- be punished for a lack of CO intuition?

You could reintroduce it and have two separate types of FOBs, the current 200k ones with a much faster respawn (like 5/10s) and the new ones which would have 20s. The new ones could be placed and established with a handful of dragons teeth or something. More people in the field in a war means a much more competitve environment, playing wars back then was a lot more rewarding and fun. Taking the entire map was a huge deal as opposed to today where it's almost daily.

Lastly, the purpose of the staff team should be re-evaluated over time and made more into how it was when MRP started. Staff left control of anything RP-related to the ranks. High ranks had actual power, they could determine what happened in their regiments (who can do tryouts, rank skips and internal infrastructure, even power over the roster). Almost everything was handled in RP and wasn't regulated. Remove the stuff about base kidnappings, kidnappings are fun for everyone involved. You can remove a fair few rules that don't serve much purpose. MRP has turned into 'take a clip' simulator.

Lastly lastly - bring back NATO instead of UAN. People know what NATO stand for and it adds much more appeal. Nobody wants to join a regiment called SOTF when they have no idea what it is. They will want to join the SAS as they're familiar with it in real life.

Possible Positives of the suggestion (At least 2):

Positives would be that the server regains its old gameplay which was much more fast-paced. It will appeal further to older players to come back.

The old FOB system would get people in the fight more often, and capturing the entire map will be something done over the course of days, nota single war.

Less staff involvement in RP will allow RP to flow more naturally. A lot of people have given up on RP entirely as it's far too regulated, you say or do something wrong you get warned for it after a 10 minute sit with 50 clips.

Possible Negatives of the suggestion:

It does remove the slower-paced combat, but the server was never really built for that. People never stopped fighting in a fast-paced style, they just fight the same way but with much worse weaponry.

The old FOB system would make losing an FOB pretty much insignificant, newer players won't be bullied by the other team because their CO's were napping all peacetime, but it could make FOB building more challenging to get people doing.

Based on the Positives & Negatives, why should this suggestion be accepted:

Old MRP was the best MRP has been. There were issues, sure, but all in all everyone had a fair chance in combat, RP flowed well and even the mingiest of players still fell in line as the LTCOL+ ranks actually held significant power over the team. MRP has devolved into petty arguments and wars which just aren't fun to fight in. After giving it a fair chance I just try and avoid fighting in wars, especially on Afghan.

Bringing back these old mechanics would increase the amount of fun people have during war, you'd see player retention increase and the server slowly starting to heal and recover from the situation it is in now. There's a lot of new content coming in and yet it's barely improving the playercount, what we need is people wanting to stay and have fun, old weapon handling, FOBs and so forth is how you do that.

This suggestion is @Cal approved

Before people -support, these changes would benefit everyone on MRP, not just infantry

 

[nathancheetah]

+Support

Old MRP things could bring a large amount of players back, which would make the server more fun

 

[Connor | FUDGESICLE]

+Support

SL will still deny it but worth a shot

 

[Michiel-MV]

BIG SUPPORT

 

[Lee Falzone]

+Support

As a infantry main and NATO enjoyer this would honestly sound better on what we have at the moment.

 

[roach3]

+support

 

[James Overscott]

+Support

I have little hope this will actually be accepted but I pray it does. I especially like the name changing. Personally, while the NWO and UAN campaign is very cool, I much more enjoy the emblems and names of the NATO and USSR campaign.

 

[Fexxyzin]

+Support

 

[Marko]

+Support

 

[StefanZEW]

+Support

 

[Eisenhower]

+support
I have always felt that UAN was lackluster and even generic in terms of their naming and logos (basically NWO is the cooler side 99% of the time). Giving UAN their NATO names and insignia back as a whole would give an opportunity for UAN to revive themselves as familiarity to its real life counterpart and ‘lore’ will encourage more players to join UAN.

 

[Vampuffin]

+Support , at the very least, let us return to NATO.

 

[Jack G]

- Support

-If old players wanted to come back, they would've already come back - they've moved on.
-The only thing I agree with, with your suggestion is the weapon changes of which is already in the works by the Content team and server leadership as well as looking towards the NATO narrative making a return against the NWO however I'd want to think more about the logistics and actual benefits against pointlessness of bringing it back.
-FOB system how it is means a 'little' bit of peacetime FOB building. How it was before, still only COs could place FOBs not NCO's and there's alternatives now. You have FOBs, Rally Markers, Tac Inserts available every 10 minutes, LAV-HQ's, Vehicles, Helicopters.

Like I say, I agree with weapons being changed and altered however I don't want the MP5 ASVAL stigma to come back where that's all we see as that's why perma-weapons were nerfed in the first place - because there was no variety in weapon/gunplay.
Reverting the gun-play to how it was with all weapons being 'lasers' offers no fix for the issue as it means new content such as the ceramic plating added becomes a pointless value and the new items in the asset slide of the tac tablet become pointless as they're destroyed easily (9k for an extra bit of armour). Furthermore, this would affect other classes such as Juggernaut and Flamer as no one would use them as they are lasered too much to justify using them.

I'm not meaning to completely invalidate your suggestion however, I recommend making these suggestions separate as there are parts I do agree with and parts I don't agree with.
My main part which I can't stress enough is that if you are wanting to pull back old players purely by buffing weapons when we want the narrative to change and be about roleplay - maybe it's not worth it.

As for returning for NATO, epic. JAF can come back and that's the only reg I rly care about in terms of the name.

 

[Kiwi]

To give my opinions on the issues you've stated.
To note, I have not read every single word but I know the jist of each issue.

To start

The guns.
The weaponry within MRP is currently under discussion into being changed to how they used to be. The weaponry has been an issue for some time and we are looking to make significant change to revert to the fun, old weapons we used to have.

Furthermore, they will not be IDENTICAL to how they used to be however (I don't know if this is public knowledge but cry I guess...?) the spread will be dramatically decreased to allow newer and older players to enjoy the gunplay during their time on the server.

I have to completely agree that the gunplay is not as fun as it was however it's still bearable and as a fellow member of AC saying "I prefer not to actively participate in wars" doesn't set a good example. It shows newer players that it's "okay" to sit out of wars because the weapons are "bad" when it's quite the opposite.

The FOBs.
To be brutally honest, I cannot see this being implemented. I myself quite enjoyed the old FOBs as well however compared to the FOBs now, it takes a lot more preparation and actually gives players things to do during peacetime instead of slapping a FOB in a corn field with 5 dragon tooth's around it to make it "legal". It makes little sense that this would work whereas a built up fortress of sort would be a deployment zone. I can completely see where you come from but it's not the direction the server should take.

Staff Involvement.
I'd like to speak to in more depth surrounding specifics of the part of this suggestion so I can take notes and bring it up in this weeks staff meeting. However I should note that, I cannot promise I'll get anything done or in setting stone. The current involvement too my knowledge is mainly overlooking rank skips. Other than that it's just staff who are overlooking their own regiments and making sure the right decisions are being made because it's their "job" to do so. If anyone in the staff team is bringing their staff rank into regimental activities and you have proof I'd gladly deal with it because that is NOT how we operate within the staff team.


Overall
Mr Valk,
I'll be leaving a neutral on this suggestion as there's clearly a lot of issues with it. The main one being that the suggestion is to appeal to older players, which heavily relies on older players returning which is not guaranteed and the old MRP scene was a lot more toxic than it is now. Yes it was fun and the majority of those involved enjoyed that environment but it's a completely different scene now and bringing that back could cause more issues than fixing current issues.

Please contact me on Discord surrounding the staff involvement part so I can get a deeper understanding and bring it up to those appropriate.

Cheers, Kiwi.

 

[Valkon]

Hello Kiwi/Jack

Firstly want to say it's great seeing the A+ team actively getting involved in the debate, it's very much appreciated.

I think the concern that's being raised the most is appealing to older players to return. Whilst this would be a slight benefit of reintroducing the older mechanics, it's much more a case of looking at why the retention of older players was much higher compared to what it is today and what can be learned from it. Of course reintroducing the old weapon mechanics wouldn't solve all problems, but it'd be a welcome step.

New player retention is almost non-existent in MRP, since I've been back I genuinely do not recall a single PVT who has gone into a regiment and stuck it out, compared to several PVTs a day back when MRP first started who would stay for several weeks.

Infantry are THE core of MRP, the weapon re-balance slowed the pace of wars down when a fast-paced war was the only real way of being able to actively counter what infantry struggle with. Back at server launch, helicopters and snipers still caused a lot of problems, but you were able to get into the fight again much more quickly and had a much easier time in countering things.

The old weapon system (basically removal of weapon spray) would actively make players feel more comfortable fighting in wars, and make them believe they hold a genuine chance. I recognise there has been an introduction of various add-ons to try and make it work, but they're semi-reliable at best. The best counter against a sniper is an AR that can accurately suppress or hit them, not a ceramic plate that can't always be relied upon.

F.O.Bs

Secondly, there are a lot more ways to reliably get into the field, but these don't really compare to how the old FOB system worked. I do enjoy the new FOB system and I was a strong advocate of it, but the methods of which to temporarily place assets in order to quickly get people into the field are very unreliable.

Tac Inserts - can easily be stolen by the enemy, especially in high-risk areas (which is what they're designed to do).

FOBs - These are very often camped and are very frustrating to spawn at, whether it be a helicopter camping it with very little to counter, or a sniper from a distance. Spawning on an FOB is arguably pointless unless you have an active air force to protect it.

LAV/BTR HQ's - These are great, but are notoriously weak. The restock on them is unreasonable in my opinion, especially as they will be destroyed by helicopters before they even have a chance to get where they need to go.

Rally Markers - these work well, basically how the Tac Inserts should work.

I would advocate a mix of Old/New and maybe replace Tac Inserts with a Command Outpost that can easily be placed by an NCO+ perhaps? It would have a much higher respawn time and would be incredibly weak to small arms fire and helicopters, but would be very easy to quickly set up.

Regular FOBs would still be required, maybe one command post per 200k FOB? Just throwing ideas, the suggestion cooldown is quite limiting.

Staff Involvement

I would say that the staff team do a great job, and by no means am I taking that away by suggesting this. It isn't really a case of staff getting overly involved, but more they have to as a result of a lot of rules that restrict the natural flow of roleplay.

Things such as kidnappings are far too over-regulated and very often end in a 'you're breaking this rule' instead of being followed through in RP. A lot of these were introduced in 2021 and did more harm than good in my opinion, actively engaging in roleplay wasn't that engaging when you had to be persistently aware of the restrictions surrounding it. If the SAS wanted to go and kidnap someone, they'd just do it, not have to wait until it hit a certain minute.

Old staff very rarely had to get involved, more often than not MPK/KGB would handle people breaking the law, these days you can barely ever get an arrest in for murder before they're banned (it's always best to let MPK/AOR handle it first, then ban, they then have to serve the rest of their sentence when they return).

Overall, I really do apprecaite the additional content constantly being added to MRP, but without addressing the primary issues surrounding player retention I believe they won't have any real affect at all. These suggestions won't fix MRP entirely, we need a complete overhaul of the internal infrastructure for that to be the case, but they'll move things in the right direction. Ultimately, the old ways were more fun for people, it got more people in to the server, people were promoted based upon merit and not off cooldowns, people felt part of a team and felt they could always contribute positively in wars regardless of the situation. Nowadays it's very defeatist, nobody wants to tackle adversity as there's never really any clear method to do so.

I keep referring to snipers, but I'll use helicopters in this scenario as an example as to why piling on more content isn't necessarily a good thing, it just makes it more difficult to change things later on.

Helicopters - would often get taken out by one stinger, this was an effective counter to infantry. Infantry could also accurately remove a helicopters tail rotor, giving them a few minutes to redeploy away from the area.

To counteract this, helicopters were given flares, stingers were now essentially useless but, with some perseverance, a group could break through a helicopter's defences, and infantry could still remove the tail rotor.

Infantry were negatively affected by this, so flares were slowed down, stingers became more effective.

Stingers then often would no longer be one-shot against most helicopters

Weapon spread removed accurate fire to remove the tail rotors.

FOB emplacements were added to protect FOBs from helicopters

Etc etc,

Now there is a lot of additional content around helicopters, the buffs/nerfs were never really reverted, more a case of more content was added to overcome a buff/nerf when there was never really a problem in the first place. All of this has led to infantry having very few active counters to a helicopter beyond stingers, and new players are just expected to suck it up and just die over and over again, it's not really fun.

It's the same with snipers, instead of giving infantry back their old tools to handle them, we've added in ceramic plating, it just doesn't really compare.

It really doesn't help that Afghan is a very open map, on Highlands all these issues are nowhere near as damaging as they currently are, even Backwater offered some level of cover to move between points.

The community really do seem to want the old ways back in some capacity, I'd love to see it voted on, if it would make the community have more fun collectively then it'd be great to see back

 

[Sandwalker]

MASSIVE PLUS SUPPORT AS HIGHLY AS I POSSIBLY CAN STATE

I have watched the server from when it was at a crawling start at launch when we had like 30-50 people on a day at most with actual involved RP and proper skill based combat, to the down fall where mid day the server would be silent and have like 20 on with 15 afk and then up to where the server is actually rammed where no one else can join with the best combat and no toxic trates minimal mining because staff actually just kicked people instead of warns and bans, also reg command and high command actually had power to do shit instead of having SL and admins pearing over their shoulder with every move and being demoted or banned if they fuck up.

Bring back the old server where peacetime we had fun could have small designated battles could go round base and RP with RMP and AOR, I want to go back to when we could actually have a proper rank structure instead of u get promoted and then you have access to this gun, no it used to be now that you are this rank you can do a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,I and actually take control of your part to play.

Combat used to be highly skilled based wanna avoid sniper get helps to kill them or get a counter snipper, wanna win in cqb the shotguns and smgs ruled wanna fun time and just kill the join ISAF OR NG and rip through people with the AK12 and RGP

As valk states the server has evolved into oh somethings gone wrong clip this clip that oh, I break a little rule because the team bent the ruls oh I'm banned, I accidentally pressed my mouse and caused a MRDM banned oh I've just been caught using my rank to punish people your banned with 5 warnings(exaggeration)

The server was calm collected when minging around and just having fun was aloud, but that insisted people to role play that out so go and have fun and kidnap and go have fun and have a battle with the opposite reg but u broke the law mpk and NG will be on your arse EVEN HC WAS NOT SAFE FROM THE military police.

Please don't just deny this suggestion actually take the time if it takes a couple weeks and go through the server of what doesn't get used what people don't like what people want what people need and just make it happen, make changes on date and give a realistic time frame and make it so STAFF AND RP ARE NOT RELATED THE RULES AND STAFF SHOULD BE BUT RP SHOULD NOT BE COMANDED BY STAFF WE HAVE RANKS FOR A REASON.

Thank you for reading and valk hope ya suggestion gets accepted.
o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7
-MRP RELEASE VETERAN Sandwalker

 

[Hamood]

+support
I have always felt that UAN was lackluster and even generic in terms of their naming and logos (basically NWO is the cooler side 99% of the time). Giving UAN their NATO names and insignia back as a whole would give an opportunity for UAN to revive themselves as familiarity to its real life counterpart and ‘lore’ will encourage more players to join UAN.

This is why I love Eisenhower

 

[Hamood]

+support

 

[Renolk]

+Support

I personally very much agree on the fact that UAN renaming itself to NATO with all of its regiments going the same way. It is more recognized in example SAS over SOTF, AG over STS, FSB over AOR. Although it adds a bit of originality, it makes everything else more unknown.

 

[Cloak]

Closed as this has been mostly implemented.