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Feedback from - TheOnly8Z - 19-Jan-2024
Hi and apologies for the long post. I'm unhealthily interested in game design for DarkRP specifically and looked into this server on Fesiug's recommendation. I'm a huge believer in lawless as the best casual roleplay format, so here's some of my thoughts and feedback after checking out the server for an hour or so.
Everything is based on my experience as a server owner and player. I used to host and code for my own DarkRP servers, but my servers were for Chinese players only (though I did play American DarkRP servers), so YMMV.
Rules:
Honestly, there's a LOT of rules for a "lawless" server. Besides the standard rules against bigotry, harassment, cheating and exploiting, almost everything should be solved either with systems or in-character player involvement. This guide sums up my thoughts on lawless pretty well.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=739536389
The main issue that the guide doesn't cover is prop abuse. Ghosting props and keeping them frozen (as the server is currently doing) solves most issues, but people can still litter props on the streets or stack them in bases. (FWIW I don't really think prop climbing is an issue; ghost props for a few more seconds after freezing if necessary.) Some in-character method to remove/destroy these props should suffice - such as a C4 for illegal roles, and the police battering ram (to remove props with a warrant). Also, I like to make ghosted props die instantly to any damage to limit the use of props during combat.
Sidenote: More powerful police helps maintain general server order but can invite opportunities for abuse. In my server I have whitelisted police roles for trusted members, which worked well but isn't a good solution for every server.
Wallet & Salary:
I dislike the "drop all pocket money on death" dynamic and think it's unhealthy for roleplay servers.
- The risk discourages interacting with unfamiliar players too much. I'm concerned this will create an overly combative server atmosphere and frustrate new players who would suffer the most from it.
- It's too much reward for picking on people. Players will likely be robbing others constantly, and since no formal announcement is needed (not that I want one), there's gonna be a lot of "robberies" that are more or less just random kills.
- The whole wallet is dropped on job change and disconnect. I understand this is probably to prevent combat logging but it's still an annoyance that will probably make someone lose money without realizing.
- It's just plain inconvenient to have to carry only the amount of money you need and constantly run back and forth to an ATM in order to minimize risk.
When I ran my DarkRP servers, I tend to set the drop amount on death to a fixed base amount + small percentage of the wallet, so that dying still costs but isn't a massive loss. I also had an insurance entity bank workers can sell that prevents money drop on a single death.
To prevent combat logging, a system to mark the player as in combat on taking damage would probably suffice. Disconnect/job change won't drop money unless the player is marked in combat, with a warning on the HUD to indicate it.
I also think salary is an important thing to keep. It encourages players to stick around the server even if they aren't being productive, and benefits new/poor players a lot, helping retention. Jobs with additional sources of income can obviously have lower/no salary to compensate.
Miner/Money Jobs
As a server owner I'm wary of lone wolf money jobs (I define them as jobs where you do tasks for money without the need to involve someone else). If these jobs don't have a good reason to interact with other jobs, players will avoid all player interaction as it's all risk, no reward.
The Miner job is a prime example of this. Combined with dropping all money on death and the need to refine ores, optimal miner gameplay is to hide the refineries in a building, sneak around to the mines and ATM while attracting as little attention as possible. Plus, due to having no passive income and limited sources of money generation, players who aren't actively earn money have a good reason to hunt miners, further reinforcing this dynamic.
There's many ways around this issue. The server I used to run had miner/fisher jobs with a similar problem. What I did was create some level of job inter-dependency - gun dealers need metals from miners to craft high end guns, and fishers can provide cooks with better ingredients than the ones they can buy. Of course, another way is to simply remove money jobs and reintroduce passive income. With the only way to earn more money being from other players (besides printers but that's another topic), there's plenty of reasons to approach people for good or ill.
Generally speaking, money is a motivating mechanic for DarkRP. Every method of obtaining money should involve other players in some way (for printers, it's to encourage police/gang conflicts), and this is why money is hard to earn in vanilla DarkRP.
Hunger System/Cook:
The vanilla DarkRP hunger system is deeply flawed and doesn't really do what it's supposed to.
- Dying resets hunger and costs no money. Instead of paying for food, players would stash their guns and money, suicide, and run back.
- As a purely punitive system, hunger feels like a chore and gets in the way of what the player wants to do.
- Being a chef is even more boring than selling other stuff, since your food only fills the bar and doesn't do much else.
I still believe having it serves a purpose, as it discourages people from isolating themselves for too long. I did a few things to the food system in my server, for your reference.
- Running out of hunger does not hurt or kill you, nor does dying reset hunger.
- Players gain bonus salary for maintaining high hunger, and no salary for being starving.
- At high hunger, players sprint faster and regenerate health.
- A cooking system that is a bit more involved than spawning entities from the F4 menu. I can provide the code if needed, though it's pretty old and janky.
- High quality food provides small bonuses like health, temporary armor and speed, etc. Food can be bought from regular NPCs but those won't do anything special.
Combat:
Didn't really test this since I was the only player in the server. The only comment I have is that 37 damage on the cheapest gun is kind of insane and probably won't play well.
- High damage weapons encourage aggression, since the player who shoots first is most likely able to kill their target before they can react.
- A longer fight is generally more interesting from a roleplay perspective. The two parties can talk or negotiate, a third party (i.e. police or a friend) might arrive to help, and more random people can come across the fight to watch or get involved.
- Short, lethal fights limits the option of the weaker party even if they survive the initial clash. They're unlikely to get away due to how easy it is to kill. If the police aren't immediately around, the fight is likely already over when and if they arrive.
My recommendation is to keep damage in line with vanilla DarkRP guns - those do little damage for good reason. Alternatively, some sort of incapacitate/revive system can be added so that going down in a fight doesn't immediately end your involvement in the scenario. Maybe after you lose the fight you can negotiate or call for help while downed.
Money Printers:
The role of money printers in vanilla DarkRP is to encourage conflict between police and gangs (or between different gangs), as destroying a printer grants most of its base price to the attacker. For this reason, I think printers should be limited to certain jobs only and never be legal. The upkeep shouldn't be too frequent, otherwise players will probably choose to stay in their house to babysit the printer instead of going out and meeting other players.
Hope these thoughts help. I'm in the Discord as well, feel free to reply here or DM me for anything. Wishing the best for the server!
RE: Feedback from - SweptThrone - 19-Jan-2024
Glad that you're interested in the server! Lots of good points, so I wanna try to directly address all of them. One thing I'll probably be mentioning a lot as an "excuse" is the low player count and small age of the server, but that's why every bit of feedback is important.
Rules
I mainly agree about what you had to say about the rules and I actually keep that one quote from that guide in mind all the time, "you don't steal because you're a thief, you're a thief because you steal." I haven't detailed how I plan to deal with staff situations, mainly because we haven't had any cases yet. Primarily, I will never start an "admin sit" unless someone actually reports a problem. Secondly, while the rules say like "no killing without a valid reason," the definition of "valid reason" is meant to be incredibly vague. What it would boil down to is: if it's abundantly clear that the rule-breaker is breaking rules to break rules, they're gonna get the boot. I was going to let people get away with something as silly as "they looked at me funny." Is this a good idea? Is it a terrible idea? I don't know! But I wanted to find out.
My original idea for prop abuse prevention was to just make every prop have health so that they could be destroyed at any time. I'm gonna be honest, I just kinda forgot to add this to the server lol. I was just gonna pull an addon off the workshop and use it. Destructible props would also let mafia roleplayers "send a message" to their enemies by breaking up their shop and furniture.
Wallet & Salary
Dropping all pocket money on death is definitely a dodgy mechanic to have on a server, and I have no experience with it in action before STRP. Maybe that's for a good reason.
Point 1 and 2 kinda go hand-in-hand. I could definitely foresee players just robbing/killing others for all of their money and it's a very valid risk that I see affecting new players more. It was even happening between a friend and I on night zero of the server. However, this just led to me keeping less money on me at a time so that I wouldn't lose it when I get killed. Does this serve any gameplay purpose or is it just annoying? I genuinely don't know yet.
For 3, there's a hidden mechanic on the server that I honestly don't mind if it's not hidden that you only drop money on disconnect/job switch if you gained money within the last five minutes. You're right in thinking that this is to prevent combat logging and "meta-scamming" and you're also right that most people don't realize. I was debating making the money number on the HUD flash red or something while your money is "hot" to give you some indication of this mechanic.
For 4, it is inconvenient, no argument there lol.
An insurance system has come up previously, so maybe before any other major changes, I could try that.
The system mentioned above is not only for combat logging but for meta-scamming too. Scamming (in-game money and products) is allowed on the server, but there's no roleplay value in taking someone's money and disconnecting immediately ("meta-scamming"). As mentioned above, I might make the money number flash red or something to indicate this.
All players earn 1% interest on their ATM balance every six hours. I'm pretty sure this accrues even when offline, so there is some passive income, but again it's not obvious.
Miner/Money Jobs
Straight up, I'm just not happy with the miner job existing, but there's this giant cave on the map that I felt like I had to use for something. I'm aware this is a shitty justification to add a shitty job, so I may as well just end up removing it.
I originally intended to have miners supply metals to gun dealers, but I'm not a fan of crafting weapons to sell them. Of course there's ways to simplify this, but then you run into the problem of gun dealers not being able to do their job fully without another player supplying metal to them. Is it necessary for a gun dealer to always be able to sell high-end guns? Maybe, maybe not.
Hunger System/Cook
I pretty much agree with all three of these points. When I was "playing" as chef on night one, I ended up just not doing that, leaving the door open, and letting people serve their own food. I could restrict this so that only chefs can cook food, but I was doing other things because I didn't want to sit in my restaurant all night.
I do agree that dying shouldn't reset hunger. It's a cheap way out.
Not too sure about the idea of giving players money for maintaining a high hunger.
I do like the idea of players sprinting faster when at full hunger. Actually might add that.
You ever play on the "Casual Resort" server? It has a pretty in-depth cooking system. It might be a little too in-depth for a DarkRP server, but it sure is fun to do, and if there was an actual reason to do it, that'd be even better.
All food gives you a small amount of health regen. It's probably not noticeable so maybe it needs to be increased, especially if you're literally dying of starvation.
Combat
Out of everything so far, the combat is probably the most experimental thing and honestly the thing I'm willing to change the least.
The idea with the high-damage weapons is so that confrontations are over quickly. Muggings are over just as quick as they started. The point is to make the attacker have the advantage, and this was mainly so that street mugging actually has a purpose and can be done. Am I too naive for thinking this way? It's possible.
My idea is that the two parties can talk or negotiate while one party has the other at gunpoint. The problem is: will players actually do this or will everyone just decide to shoot first and ask questions never? Again, I haven't been able to see yet. This whole scenario also allows bystanders to be vigilantes and encourages civil protection to patrol to have a chance to prevent these things.
Your third point, however, is valid and something I hadn't thought about yet. That being said, an arriving police officer could be the new party holding the other at gunpoint - or batonpoint. With gunshots that can be heard from much further than most servers, the police can actually go to the scene and initiate another scenario.
A revive system also came up before, so that's another thing I might end up adding.
Money Printers
As with the miner job, I'm also not too happy with money printers existing at all. Once again, my shitty justification is simply that I made the printers and figured I'd add them to the server. I tried balancing them so that they're not too profitable, but I think all I managed was forcing players to have to tend to them almost 24/7, which ironically is exactly what I was trying to avoid.
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I started rushing towards the end as my friends wanted to play games lol, so if you have anything else or think my points sucked, feel free to let me know.
RE: Feedback from - TheOnly8Z - 20-Jan-2024
Quote:Secondly, while the rules say like "no killing without a valid reason," the definition of "valid reason" is meant to be incredibly vague. What it would boil down to is: if it's abundantly clear that the rule-breaker is breaking rules to break rules, they're gonna get the boot. I was going to let people get away with something as silly as "they looked at me funny."Going by vibes is definitely the right approach, but I feel like the wording can mislead people into believing they can call staff for individual RDM incidents (which they really shouldn't). The lawless guide uses the term "MassDM", which probably fits better. Alternatively, since any judgment is up to staff discretion anyways, a catch-all "behave yourself" rule might work too. The fewer bullet points on the MOTD, the more likely people are to actually pay attention.
Quote:My original idea for prop abuse prevention was to just make every prop have health so that they could be destroyed at any time.I'm in favor of the idea, though I personally prefer making props resistant or immune to bullet damage, forcing players to get closer to use melee / explosives.
Quote:For 3, there's a hidden mechanic on the server that I honestly don't mind if it's not hidden that you only drop money on disconnect/job switch if you gained money within the last five minutes.Having "insecure" money that gets lost when combat logged is a fine idea, I agree that it just needs to be communicated more clearly. Assuming the amount dropped is the amount earned, perhaps the HUD can show two wallet values, with the "insecure" value in red. When insecure money is dropped due to job change, a notification might be good to have as well.
Quote:I originally intended to have miners supply metals to gun dealers, but I'm not a fan of crafting weapons to sell them. Of course there's ways to simplify this, but then you run into the problem of gun dealers not being able to do their job fully without another player supplying metal to them. Is it necessary for a gun dealer to always be able to sell high-end guns? Maybe, maybe not.Needing another person is indeed a downside to dependency, but it does have the nice benefit of making the high-end guns truly rare as a result. Alternatively it could be made so that metals can be produced/bought without a miner around, just rate limited and/or more expensive.
Quote:Out of everything so far, the combat is probably the most experimental thing and honestly the thing I'm willing to change the least.My opinion on combat lethality isn't too informed - I haven't really used or played with weapons more lethal than the M9K guns (which are plenty too deadly for me already) - so what I have is mostly conjecture, and I'm interested to see how it plays out.
Quote:I tried balancing [the money printers] so that they're not too profitable, but I think all I managed was forcing players to have to tend to them almost 24/7, which ironically is exactly what I was trying to avoid.Yeah, the printer requires a lot of babysitting when I tried it and isn't really fun to manage. The low profit margin only makes it worse as losing it to overheat is a big blow, and you can't tell if it's overheating unless the printer is in view. If it's to be kept, I'm of the opinion that printers should be restricted to certain jobs only (gang/criminal if available) and be illegal regardless of mayor, so that the police are also incentivized to seek out and raid printers.
Last night after the post, I gave another look at the server a bit more with Fesiug, and overall it feels like the economy aspects need the most attention. My main concern is twofold.
First, while everyone has a baseline cost to doing their job (paying for food and attrition loss from deaths), many jobs don't have a baseline income/salary to offset it. If a merchant job isn't getting business, they would bleed money over time and be incentivized to either disconnect or switch to a job that either has a salary or can generate money on demand (like miner). Having a base salary incentivizes players to stick around the server even if they aren't actively doing a profitable activity, so I'm strongly in favor of keeping salaries on most jobs.
Second, due to how lethal the guns are, the price points on them feel really inconsistent. Cheap guns are way too cheap and high-end guns are quite overpriced.
Easy to acquire guns being deadly is a huge contributor to RDM, as both the barrier of entry and financial loss is minimal. Just for comparison, in vanilla settings it takes around 10.7 minutes of salary to afford the cheapest gun (the glock that does 10 damage). With the server's current starting money and gun prices I fear people could get very trigger happy. On the other hand, the expensive guns seem cost ineffective. For example, the M4A1 civilian version is 44% the cost of the automatic version, but with the same fire rate and damage, it can just as easily kill someone if the shooter starts the fight despite its lower magazine capacity. With all the damage numbers so high, the advantages of a better gun is diminished. Even the cheapest gun can score a one-hit headshot kill, so the playing field is quite level (for better or for worse).
A couple of other side notes.
- Dumping magazine on a reload is awkward since even on a full magazine, guns can be reloaded to top off the chamber. Either by instinct or on accident (trying to switch firemodes for example), a lot of ammo can be accidentally lost. I implemented a similar feature for the TacRP weapon base but made the physically dropped magazine contain the lost ammo, giving the shooter an option to pick it back up if there's time for it.
- The ATM seems needlessly time consuming to operate. I guess the point is to make the user vulnerable, but in most cases it just feels like a waste of time. I personally run a modified BraxATM in my servers, it's comparatively a lot quicker to use (1 or 2 inputs needed, number input is through Derma and not a in-world keypad).
- Gun shipments cost 10x the price for 10 guns, so there is zero reason to buy shipments - they should probably get a 20-30% discount to encourage bulk buying and thus setting up shop to hold the stock. I actually prefer the vanilla DarkRP approach of disallowing buying individual long guns entirely.
- It's really weird that the bank manager can just siphon all the money out of the vault. I'm not really sure what that's supposed to accomplish, nominally the mayor is supposed to stop this but in low population servers having a mayor isn't really guaranteed.
- Having a separate police job specifically to raid homes seems unnecessary. Why not just let the regular civil protection participate in raids?
- 30 second respawn feels too long. Even without NLR or some equivalent, it takes a long time to gear up and return to an ongoing situation anyways; and in cases where the player can't/doesn't intend to return, it's just frustrating.
- Jobs should probably spawn near their job-specific places. Notably I spent like 5 minutes trying to find the mines as a miner when I first joined.
- With 2 players in the server, one can instantly demote the other since nobody else is around to vote. IDK if this is a big deal or not.
- I don't know if there's any system in place to prevent people from AFKing for salary as bank manager/clerk/police. Might be worth considering.
- I had some confusing trying to use the long use entities due to a lack of a prompt (and inconsistency. e.g. vodka is instant use but fruits are long use). They should probably have a tooltip saying what the interaction is and to hold the key when hovered over.
- Police dropping their guns on death seems ripe for abuse and will result in a lot of guns floating around the server even if nobody is selling any.
RE: Feedback from - Fesiug - 23-Jan-2024
We were talking about the Locksmith job the other day as well. The person who sells you a keypad is the same guy who cracks it. Personally, I'd disable the Locksmith and replace its tools with one-time use ones sold by the Supplier
RE: Feedback from - SweptThrone - 24-Jan-2024
I don't know about removing Locksmith. I like limiting the number of people who can silently break into other peoples' homes. It will make people who want to raid others go find a Locksmith and hire him instead of taking it into their own hands. The Locksmith could also have inside information about who he's sold KeypAdders to, which he could choose to sell or keep secret.