UNGOC - Half baked regiment, doesn't have a proper gameplay loop so they are forced to piggyback off CI/foundation RP. Poor leadership in the regiment with big egos. Poor leadership was the main reason why I resigned from UNGOC Captain. I think they would work a lot better as a regiment if they had more proper roleplay, like the foundation always has roleplay that you can do, studying SCPs, stopping D-Class from escaping, but UNGOC? they don't have any proper roleplay inside their base, usually you can see them just rdming eachother in their base because they have nothing better to do, I even remember doing this with thato and joking that it was training. From my memory of being in UNGOC most of the real, solid proper roleplay came from events, which are cool but they need more.
^ Not trying to say that UNGOC are bad roleplayers, or anything rude like that, it's criticism of how UNGOC roleplay is built to work
Also SL ruling that entering foundation to sample SCPs is part of their gameplay loop is so stupid, I hope this is an old and now irrelevant ruling but you never know since SL don't ever write down or tell the server about their rulings
UNGOC has its ups and downs, and was designed to be the smaller third group, where players would go to be more RP intensive (I.E Diplomacy, negotiation etc) and less combat focused. It was never designed to be a second CI, hence why alot of people considered it combat wise to be debuffed (looking at you, O-Suits). There is a body of work going into getting more RP for GOC, see the GM part below.
SL - Big egos and awkward to talk to, I won't say specifically who but a lot of them are really bad at their jobs and are passive aggressive or flat out toxic for literally no reason other than their dictator-type ego. A lot of people fear them, and it's fair to feel that way. Also there is no need for a roleplay health role in SL, overall it hinders proper roleplay more than it helps. There are a lot of rulings out there made by specific SL that don't make any sense, are plain dumb, or made off personal bias, which is complete bullshit, and since SL don't communicate that these rulings exist you could get in trouble for something that both doesn't make sense and isn't directly against written rules. Example: Rackarain ruled that you cannot Class-F the Mayor or the Rangers to be hostile to the UNGOC because of CI/GOC politics (confused, maybe he'll comment and clarify) Another example, me and another were pulled for FearRP because there was 7 or so in a room with their guns down, attempting to Fears us to put the guns away (we were disquised D-Class), we shot and killed every single one instead, because their guns were down. (ruling is that realistically you would be scared because you're in a room full of MTF with guns)
I'm not going to go into indivual rulings or anything like that, as we have a place for those types of complaints, however, I will remind people that our SL team are all volunteers who give up a tremendous amount of time to better the server we play on. I disagree in the strongest sense with your comment that they are "aggressive or toxic for literally no reason other than their dictator-type ego". On the US side, i deal with alot of the senior complaints made by the playerbase, and overall i look at most complaints for a QA assurance point of view. There may be times where SL get frustrated with indivduals, who want to argue down everything because nobody can ever be wrong, but for the most part, these volunteers work increadly hard to look after the serer.
In relation to the RP Health role, this was something that was requested by players, who wanted a specific individual who took an overview of the RP on the server to ensure things were going well. There was a lot of complaints re appointment of leaders etc taking to long, or getting different answers re Roleplay so we created a centralised role, whos only job on SSL was to look after RP health.
Updates - Updates lately haven't been very well thought out, 8837 harmed the gameplay loop because it's way too powerful (and also 25.52 US dollars for an scp? really?). All of the chemical updates lately, such as Class-X, roleplay chemicals update, and the Gas Grenades have been entirely pointless, they serve almost zero use in combat/roleplay, especially Class-X and the gas grenades, They're just too expensive and time consuming to use.
Also the grenades do jack shit for damage, what the fuck is the point? Like seriously Cyanogen and red phosphorous are straight ASS.
And realistically you will NEVER use Class-X, 1 dose is like 300k, and takes several days if not weeks to make, even if you did manage to afford a dose, there's no actual uses in roleplay for it! It's simply too expensive and too rare to find a good use for it. (Class-Fed personnel is not a reason, just smoke they ass.)
In relation to SCPs being too overpowerful or underpowered, this will be a constant balancing act. NL and SL gets alot of complaints both ways in relation to it. I am of the vintage on this server where i remember 7722 getting ALOT of complaints, same with Type Greens, same with almost every SCP that gets added. In relation to chemicals, they are something that are in a constant state of update. You have to remember however, that updates apply to both servers, and both servers work together to try and balance.
Map changes - Mid, oversized for no reason, why is medbay so large if its just going to be empty all day, also the SS update was terrible. New killhouse is really bad and somehow more buggy than the old one, most of the teasers look good, but then it gets implemented and its just mid or bad.
Everyone is going to have their own opinions in relation to map changes. The maps are what you make of them. If you have a specific bug on the map, i encourage players to report it so we can get it fixed. When it comes to changes, alot of them are things that the playerbase has suggested or wanting areas to RP. I know people gets nostalgic for the old map, but it becomes one of those "grass is greener on the otherside". Recently MRP went back to their old playstyle, hoping that would be the cureall for the issues, but it wasn't.
Lag - The server is absurdly laggy, Server performance declines with every update, but the dimensions update and janitor/dclass update flat out ruined the servers performance. It's normal to see sub 30 average FPS now, with HORRIBLE lag spikes, its unbearable especially during combat.
2023 - pre 8837 and various map changes
70 to 110 FPS, lag spikes on the occasion
2024 - Dimension Update
40 to 60 FPS, Lag spikes becoming more frequent, occasionally freezing during combat
2024 - Janitor/D-Class Update
28 to 40 FPS , Lag spikes happen extremely often, occasionally freezing during combat, sometimes it will go 15-17 FPS with terrible lag spikes.
^ I will not be providing pictures/clips of this FPS trend, you could probably look through old clips to find similar trends though
Lag, The Bain of my existence. I think people tend to confuse update = Lag. Most of the time, that is not the case. Alot of the issues recently has come from other areas which are being looked at. The smaller scale lag tends to be due to issues with peoples PACs, and we have put things in place so that staff are aware of this. There will be constant work to improve server performance, but you got to remember, Gmod is older then alot of the playerbase (came out in 2004). The fact we have a server running with 128 players, with constant updates is quite a rare thing in GMOD nowdays.
SA/SC - Pyro was the last good director of administration, ever since he left it's fallen off and hard, I would say they are incompetent. Site command is also currently really just bad, Both SC and SA are scared to do anything "bad" to UNGOC over the fear that SL will deem it hindering roleplay. This just ends up increasing tensions between departments and SA+ and GOC. If I could describe SA and SC in one word it would be timid. Also both are slow to respond to things, I get that you all get dms constantly but if its taking a week to respond to something or make a final decision then you are just slow.
SA/SC/RP leaders had a big sit down with Yeke and I the other day for about 4 hours. Alot of work is being done in this space, but will take time to develop. People seem to forget that players who occupy this roles are roleplaying, they aren't the real life SA / SC, they have RL jobs / school / lives. Alot of US players come from outside the US as well, and there is a timezone issue.
In the past 24 hours, some work has gone into this. RP leaders and GMs will be working closer together in relation to building RP. However, we do have to be mindful, that there is performance limitations that are in place, to avoid lag.Gamemasters - 90% of events follow the same few formats, some person comes to the site from X department and makes shit up on the spot, or a new anomoly is discovered and its just roaming the site doing nothing actually interesting, just like running around, an example is the dodo bird event, the deer event, etc etc.or those events where the GM just straight up sells GM effects, those events are the worst, and the majority of the time the effects the game master sells you just kills you, so whats the point? I know gamemasters have requirements to fulfill, but like come on, these are so bland...
Communication - SA/SC and SL are very bad at properly communicating changes/updates, an example is the change to DEAs loadout changing it from H&K P30L to the CZ-75, not even a word was spoke about this, or the time Site Administration announced that during code blacks personnel are to be escorted by DEA and NU-7 to the UNGOC FOB, no SA/SC talked to DEA, or NU-7 regarding this, If you're going to make a change that affects a department you need to tell the departments about the changes and despite this they continued to have the same site admin over DEA, I know SA never does jack shit when they are "overseeing" departments, but he never said a word in the DEA channels until his second time "overseeing" the department. Another thing, If you make changes to a subdivision, contact the leader of the subdiv about it, it takes like 2-3 minutes just to ask who the leader is or just pop in their discord channel and tell them directly.
Pinging USA in foundation announcements is not an effective way of communicating changes, Not every one has the USA/UK role, and a lot of people just ignore them.
Communications is something that is being worked on, but not everything is going to be discussed with everyone, otherwise nothing will ever get done.
Combat - The current state of combat is so bad, if you don't have a perma gun you are significantly easier to kill especially on surface, despite constant complaints about the poor state of combat nothing is changed, there is no point to trying to "balance" loadouts, when someone can just pay 12 dollars for a FHR-40 or ARX-160. VHS-D2, ARX-160, and MSBS were super cool back when they weren't perma guns, they had mystique, rarity, and they were only on a few jobs, thats what made them cool, now that they are just perma guns its just like whatver its just an ARX. Fighting SCPs is also so boring, it's not fun at all, the gameplay loop of fighting scps (think being E11 or SCU) is terrible. Run out to find where the SCP is, shoot it for 500 damage then die respawn and do it again until someone else beams, cuffs and RCs it. It used to be a lot funner when it was viable to be drinking potent duloxetine for basically the whole breach, you were able to merk the scp, run away shoot run away while reloading and shoot again. Now it just feels like a get eaten by an scp simulator. fun the first few times, after that it's like watching paint dry. I think the QBZ may be the last genuinally good gun thats only available on a few jobs. (unpopular opinion but kbar is bad). Server lag is bad to the point where the majority of my deaths in combat were because of lag, whether it was freezing mid combat or just stupidly low fps and lag spikes, It's bad and only seems to get worse with every update, and is one of the reasons why I am quitting the server, I don't want to play on a server this laggy anymore. It's just not fun.
I've covered alot of it above, however, when it comes to combat, it is a balancing act. Nobody likes overpowered things, and everyone considers themselves under powered. Everyone wants to be the main character, which in a server our size is not realistic.
To discuss other areas of complaint
"remove GOC and make CI better (Bigger base, more jobs, and more things to do)"
In relation to removing GOC, that is not being planned for. we don't just delete a whole group of peoples RP because others don't like it.
In relation to make CI better, alot of the "more things to do" Catagory comes down to your DELCOM+ (CI RP Leaders). Its kind of in the name, RP leaders. Whilst new content can sometimes assist with RP, for CI, its not likely to. CI leadership need to work together and come up with the RP for their players outside of (Main Raid / DC Raid / Main Raid / DC Raid).
"I just want to say when it comes to SL/NL they dont allow CI/GOC/Foundation (from what i heard) to control there faction when it comes to other GOIs. What i mean by that is that foundation cant call for a war or stop GOC from coming into base for testing/sampling bc its part of there "gameplay loop" but is that not what research gameplay loop is? For CI and GOC they cant go to war with each other without SSL perms. I understand that the people are sometimes dumb but why cant a RP leader (The commander of CI or the general of GOC) call for war over things that have been happening within RP. I just think that when it comes to stuff in character that SL/NL should be left out of it because the server should be controlled by the people that are RPing and not the people that are not even in the RP when its happening.
"
There has recently been changes that have been put in, but i'll address the war issue. I was the one that restricted wars on the US. This wasn't an SSL decision, but an NL decision. There was a very good reason for it. I've tried to keep it out of view to not embarrass people, but since people constantly ask, the reason why wars are restricted on US are due to wars being started for:
1. "Don't like someones profile picture on discord (CI-GOC war for 3 days)"
2. "Killed a DEA on surface who was killing a civ (F-GOC war for 2 weeks, total communication blackout)
3. "Assisted CI in freeing a captured Delcom" (F-GOC/CI war for 2 days)
4. "Conducted an AR on Foundation" (Total communication blackout for 3 days (F-GOC)
5. "Being rude over comms" (GOC-CI War for 2 days)
And I can go on and on. Wars were not something which people should be chucking out for no reasons. The reason why UK is not restricted at the moment is because they don't do stuff like this. Is it always going to be restricted? No, work is being done to reduce the restrictions, but as I told the RP leaders the other day, Trust is earned. NL and SSL don't want to be spending 4-5 hours a day in meetings try to resolve issues because players have a spat and then start a war over that spat.
Final note for the thread:
As a community, we all need to take responsibility for the roleplay we create. Not everyone is going to like what we do. Not everyone can be the main character. Nobody is the " Real life (Insert role)". Some of the best RP I've seen in my 2.5 years on this server has come from the player base. If you have an idea you think might be good for RP (like an RP enhancement or minor event) bring it up with our GM/ Event team. If you have a complaint about how something was handled in game, create a thread in the complaints section, so senior staff can look at it and see if theres something that needs to be addressed. Creating long threads to spill all the grievances over along period of time doesn't solve anything, and causes people to become highly defensive. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but if we are going to improve the community, we need to respect each other.
MODERATOR NOTE
I'm not going to close this thread for now, but it starts to become a pile on, I will be. Lets all be respectful.