An unhinged rant complaining about the lack of roleplay standards

[Casada_Radio]

Rex texas shown in positive light -------------------------------------------
Rex texas proved to be a shitler as mp -------------------------------------
Countless number of times --------------------------------------------------
Rest of the post invalid ------------------------------------------------------
Worth of reading it = 0 ------------------------------------------------------
Shutdown ---------------------------------------------------------------------

Times have changed bud

The days of Feweh alt, Xeno bias and Marine bias are no more.

Now is the time of the MP bias.

[GDIS Pathe]

We have the shitters. We have the weapons. We need MPs. MPs like SSGT Amelia Locke and LCDR William "Jester" Crmison. MPs like SSGT Rex Texas and LT Brett McMatherson. We need you all. Service gurantees citizenship.

I've stated this many times but there's no fun in being a shitter when everyone around you is a shitter too. Breaking a window in the brig when there's no MPs or a single bald one? Boring. Breaking a window when all of the MP mains are there: now that's fun!

People who are saying that TGMC is better are pretty much all shitters, who got caught a few times, had to do their brig time and now are trying to take their revenge on the server. If you feel that TGMC is so perfect, go play that, what's the point of having 2 servers doing the same thing?

Now I'm going to go even further than Feweh here and probably be the only man defending the squad requisition rooms. There is a reason why every single real life military has the same oppressive structure. Because it works. Having decent soldiers would always be better than a bunch of rambos who think they're hot shit. I've been reading some memoirs from the Spanish Civil War and that was one of the obvious things about it. To be REALLY effective at CM TDM you actually need the very basic milsim RP, the way the gameplay is set up. I think the asymmetry and the hardness of it is actually one of the greatest things about CM. If you want to kill one million bugs alone, there are what, thousands of games you can play instead.

So I believe that it's a duty of the command, MPs and the admins to actually socialize the player base, turning them into a proper soldiers. Unfortunately you can barely do that after the deployment has started. Squad requisition rooms are not just the RP encouraging thing Feweh is talking about, but a compliance scenario. You fail the test, you get punished.

Most of the people arrested after failing those type of scenarios do become better soldiers in the end. I've probably arrested more of my men than any other SL player on the server. I even BEd some. Most of them actually improved after that and were way more beneficial to the force in the end.

If anything we need more of such compliance scenarios, that would allow us to socialize the revolving door of baldies better. Not going to happen, but it should. For example the medbay storage, maybe there should be more stuff there, giving a small benefit to the players, but pretty much being a trap to get you arrested.

I also always wanted more ML enfrocement in the operational area, at the hand of SLs.

As for the state of the RP on the server, in my opinion it has been getting somewhat better in general, but there are some noticeable things that got worse.

Firstly the command. We've lost pretty much all of the great COs and most of the new ones try to be nice, to the detriment of the compliance among their men. Don't get me wrong, an odd Dinkle or Windhealer is nice, but we need more Carsons and Crimsons.

Staff Officer corps are in a sad state, it was always bad, but I think it got worse now.

We have too many green SLs, nothing really wrong with them, but they just don't have what it takes yet.

The squad culture is better than it was a year ago in my opinion. Alpha is in a great state, due to hard work put by some SSGTs. Bravo is the nicest and most compliant Bravo there ever was at least since I've joined the game. Charlie is......... Delta seems to have lost a large part of its toxicity, but also some squad culture too.

The total number of regular shitters is pretty low now too.

Please stop complaining and set MP to medium.

I mean if you're gonna drag out the example of the military hierarchy, it's worth keeping in mind that by the later stages of the Vietnam War unit discipline had effectively collapsed in many areas with Enlisted men simply refusing to follow orders either in some killing their Superiors (fragging and whatnot) or forcing them to bargain with them or lock up weapons under guard to avoid getting killed.

On the flip side, the ANZACs were legendary for their discipline problems, didn't seem to hamper their combat effectiveness one bit.

If you actually try to enforce discipline ground side as an SL, you'll end up with the Vietnam scenario, "accidental PBs" marines dropping half a mag worth of AP rounds into you as "FF", and PFCs and squaddies simply refusing to listen to orders.

[sg2002]

You have to be smart about it and the actual scenarios are pretty rare. I've had CMPs ordering me to detain my own men. If it's Delta I'm just gonna tell the guy to stay out of my eyesight and "I'm sorry LCDR, he ran off, I can't find him". I also had cases of such unbelievable idiots where the whole squad would not only help me detain them, but "hey SSGT maybe we should frag him instead?"

[Fix it again Tony]

People who are saying that TGMC is better are pretty much all shitters, who got caught a few times, had to do their brig time and now are trying to take their revenge on the server. If you feel that TGMC is so perfect, go play that

We are not worthy! Oh GOD please DONT bash us. We are NOT worthy to your attention. Thank the GODS he even REPLIES to our sh*pots about our 2D speccman game. Oh Lord HAVE MERCY!

[sg2002]

Oh no! How dare I to to say anything unhinged in a topic literally called "unhinged rant"!

[ChainsawMullet]

ur mom is unhinged lol

[Fewher]

I mean if you're gonna drag out the example of the military hierarchy, it's worth keeping in mind that by the later stages of the Vietnam War unit discipline had effectively collapsed in many areas with Enlisted men simply refusing to follow orders either in some killing their Superiors (fragging and whatnot) or forcing them to bargain with them or lock up weapons under guard to avoid getting killed.

Yeah but forced conscription will do that especially when the people at home don't support the war either.

Lore wise the units on the ship aren't the most elite or supreme, but they're reasonable soldiers with some prior combat experience and passed qualifications to meet standards.
You could say a quirk on your character is being blunt, rude, arrogant or obnoxious but you can't claim your character wakes up from Cryo and is completely against shooting the aliens because they're anti war.


The point is more-so that in-game discipline via mechanics and features promotes a mindset in the player that they must follow in order to play the game and fit in.
By having steps of Requisitions, Briefing etc.. you're establishing a guideline for new players to adhere to and understand the tone of the game.

Eliminating these in favor of UI that auto-gives all your tools, information, items and guns promotes a mentality that this is a shooter.


Essentially what I've been echoing in this thread.... there's a bigger picture to all these small minor pieces that the average player does not see and it's up to the Developers and Managers to be able to see this.

[Urytion]

I don't think people are getting the main point that Feweh is making, and I kind of hinted at. I'm not necessarily saying we MUST be a roleplaying server. I am saying the rules and the game need to align. If the rules say we're MRP, then we should be MRP and staff should be enforcing this. If we're not, then strike that rule and let us get away with doing whatever stupid bullshit we want.

For the record, I think we should be an RP server, because at least the surroundings of RP is required for this game to be fun.

[Dreven]

We have the shitters. We have the weapons. We need MPs. MPs like SSGT Amelia Locke and LCDR William "Jester" Crmison. MPs like SSGT Rex Texas and LT Brett McMatherson. We need you all. Service gurantees citizenship.

I've stated this many times but there's no fun in being a shitter when everyone around you is a shitter too. Breaking a window in the brig when there's no MPs or a single bald one? Boring. Breaking a window when all of the MP mains are there: now that's fun!

People who are saying that TGMC is better are pretty much all shitters, who got caught a few times, had to do their brig time and now are trying to take their revenge on the server. If you feel that TGMC is so perfect, go play that, what's the point of having 2 servers doing the same thing?

Now I'm going to go even further than Feweh here and probably be the only man defending the squad requisition rooms. There is a reason why every single real life military has the same oppressive structure. Because it works. Having decent soldiers would always be better than a bunch of rambos who think they're hot shit. I've been reading some memoirs from the Spanish Civil War and that was one of the obvious things about it. To be REALLY effective at CM TDM you actually need the very basic milsim RP, the way the gameplay is set up. I think the asymmetry and the hardness of it is actually one of the greatest things about CM. If you want to kill one million bugs alone, there are what, thousands of games you can play instead.

So I believe that it's a duty of the command, MPs and the admins to actually socialize the player base, turning them into a proper soldiers. Unfortunately you can barely do that after the deployment has started. Squad requisition rooms are not just the RP encouraging thing Feweh is talking about, but a compliance scenario. You fail the test, you get punished.

Most of the people arrested after failing those type of scenarios do become better soldiers in the end. I've probably arrested more of my men than any other SL player on the server. I even BEd some. Most of them actually improved after that and were way more beneficial to the force in the end.

If anything we need more of such compliance scenarios, that would allow us to socialize the revolving door of baldies better. Not going to happen, but it should. For example the medbay storage, maybe there should be more stuff there, giving a small benefit to the players, but pretty much being a trap to get you arrested.

I also always wanted more ML enforcement in the operational area, at the hand of SLs.

As for the state of the RP on the server, in my opinion it has been getting somewhat better in general, but there are some noticeable things that got worse.

Firstly the command. We've lost pretty much all of the great COs and most of the new ones try to be nice, to the detriment of the compliance among their men. Don't get me wrong, an odd Dinkle or Windhealer is nice, but we need more Carsons and Crimsons.

Staff Officer corps are in a sad state, it was always bad, but I think it got worse now.

We have too many green SLs, nothing really wrong with them, but they just don't have what it takes yet.

The squad culture is better than it was a year ago in my opinion. Alpha is in a great state, due to hard work put by some SSGTs. Bravo is the nicest and most compliant Bravo there ever was at least since I've joined the game. Charlie is......... Delta seems to have lost a large part of its toxicity, but also some squad culture too.

The total number of regular shitters is pretty low now too.

Please stop complaining and set MP to medium.

Crimson is one of my favorite CMPs actually because of how he toes the line between being extremely ML focused but also knows when to pull punches, use NJPs, and how to engage MPing in a way thats enjoyable to be a criminal against, an example that alot of other MP mains I see tend to follow and just get stuck on the "be a robotic asshole" character trait. The problem I see with CO's these days is they focus too much on acting like a shipside CMP+ who micromanages every department while either putting the entire operation on the XO (nothing wrong with that if the XO wants to do that, but it should be a symbiotic command relationship) and don't put the effort into tryna provide a unique experience and round flow for the marines. One quote I got once was "I don't bother trying to come up with plans because the marines won't follow them anyway", which I think is an extremely defeatist and elitist attitude that I see with alot of the WL even back when I was actually in it, if you aren't confident in your own ability to command the marines then why are you even playing commander? Accept that some marines wont listen to your orders and rush their meta spots, and thats fine because thats how they wanna play, but if you actually have some presence, communicate and present a plan and get your SL's and SO's onboard then you can be amazed at how all the 'no roleplay shitter ungas' actually try to follow your crazy flank moves. It also really helps if you actually build up rapport with marines by doing side activities, making jokes and just generally having a fun time with it. Most the time I see its either the exact same tried and tested meta strat or a simple deathball rush, which are fine and i've also done that plenty but I wanna see more CO's like Juros, Carsons, Dinkles, Frans and Heinz's who really push the boundaries of 'cm strategy' with big ballsy LZ2 flanks, weird fob locations etc. You can play CO as a hands off CIC officer who focuses on communication and logistical handling and thats cool, or you can be a frontline rabble rouser who draws up big battleplans and see's them out personally, or you can be somewhere inbetween, but you should always aim as CO to be atleast doing something with it, and its better to try something unique and fail than win another 12:30 hydro deathball rush imo. Some CO's focus so hard on the CIC roleplay they might aswell play CL or CE imo, as their basically just taking the role to be background fluff. Im hoping TechWeb gets expanded on and has more initial things to buy that could help CO's start off the deployment in different ways.

I like the idea of their being storage rooms that spawn stocked with equipment (depending on pop perhaps) and could have alarms inside them that alert MP's to marines breaking into them, giving some IC conflict and areas for them to patrol. I also genuinly think that shotgun beanbags should be a req item that marines could get their hands on (but they would be considered contraband), or have some kinda non lethal option available to marines becase stun prods are still broken.

I think your kind of being weird about TGMC here though, its actually a completely different server to CM in both gameplay and feel. Really the only relation between them now is the fact that xenomorphs exist in both, even the marines are completely different aesthetically. The whole community inter-relations between TGMC and CM is so toxic and stupidly gatekeeped on both sides, saying this as someone who has actually played a decent amount of both servers.

Your method of SLing as being super compliant to ML has probably worked for you, but I could also give the example that I've pretty much always taken my squaddies side over that of MP's and I generally feel like I can get shit done and lead a cohesive unit whenever im lead. Being pro ML or anti ML isn't mutually exclusive and having both types of IC attitudes in the game is what creates alot of fun conflict and culture. Same with milsimmer roleplayers and more goofy 'characterful' roleplayers, both compliment eachover and make eachover stand out, and the majority of the playerbase is somewhere inbetween as the "dude who just wants to play TDM" anyway, so the whole RP debate to be me is just weird and unnecessary. One of my favorite roleplay situations in CM was being a drug dealer CL, and the MP's set up an actual undercover sting operation by sending a private with a recorder to get ultrazine off me, and were taking turns staking out my office with binoculars, if the CMP wanted to be an ass he coulda just force searched me and taken ultrazine off me to arrest me, but it woulden't have been half as interesting or enjoyable for both sides. The gradual OOCing of ML has been a disaster imo, for MP's especially, although good moves have been made with removing ooc protections and loosening jailbreak rules.

[sg2002]

Windhealer, I pretty much completely agree with everything you wrote here. Now just to elaborate a little bit.

Yes, COs ignoring strategy, leaving the planning duty to the XO and sticking to the meta has been one of the sore points for me too. But it cannot be blamed entirely on the COs. Firstly the current meta is just very different from the metarush era. Now xenos would contest every inch of the ground they can. So you just don't have any ground to implement your convoluted deployment plan. I also go for CO on lowpop exclusively where I have to go for the most boring plan imaginable, because it's the only plan that has any chance to work. And then nothing is preventing it from being fucked up by things like the entire Bravo dying to 2.5 xenos. Or shitty supply for that matter. Then there's the map pool problem. Most of the new maps are just not that great for implementing any interesting plans. I like them, but the command angle was somewhat ignored while designing them. Look it's a free game, the dev team does what it can with the limited resources it has, so them somewhat failing this very hard task is more than acceptable. Remember the insane Juro plans on ICE we would complain about to no end, but everybody would execute them, usually with the same end result, but that was freakin' fun.

Now in terms of more compliance scenarios, I think I should specify that breaking in and stealing is not the only way to pass them. You could just you know, ask your superiors to give that shit out. For example if you want a medical storage rig, just ask your SO and see what happens. The boring operational communication is pretty important for inspiring loyalty among your men. I'd be more loyal to the CIC who gets me that frontline M41 AP drop, than to the command who completely ignores me. And they ignore me like what, 80% of the time? Along the same lines, in the last round I was your CO, I've managed to recover a Delta medic from the groundside way past the evacuation time. That medic later came by to CIC to personally say thank me for bothering to coordinate his rescue(my XO actually did that, but on my direct orders). Then later, he saved my life from an assassination attempt. On the meta level, he'd remember this and the next time he would see me as CO he'd inclined to stay loyal and listen to my orders more closely. That's also why I'm saying that SOs are very underrated and am currently trying to grow a proper competent SO corps for myself.

To put it in another way, command should also ideally have some options to do something for marines before the deployment starts, so that the grunts would understand that we're there for them.

In terms of groundside COs, I don't have a problem with them as long as you understand that you may be compromising the boring part of running the operation, since your XO may be not up to par. Whenever it was you or Tom, it was generally fine, especially with a good XO. But there were plenty of people who just plain sucked at it. Also whenever I'm a grunt and I see any officer fighting on the ground I'm like "oh god, that dumbass is gonna get himself killed". I also try to empower the SLs as much as possible and COs presence on the ground kinda hampers them a bit.

I guess I should have been more elaborate in my shot on TGMC. I don't have a single problem with it and the people playing it. If anything it's great that it exists and there's a place for people frustrated with the CMs design decisions. It seems like a great server to play together with CM, especially if you get tired of getting memed by DP, BOO or the XX ravager breaking your ribcage for the 20th time in a row. TGMC's design is more intuitive, but I do believe that CM is just deeper and greater. I was not aiming at the TGMC players in general, but only on that small toxic clique that keeps hanging around CM for some reason and parroting "TGMC GOOD, CM BAD, MAKE CM INTO TGMC".

As I stated before a good SL can would still could sabotage any ML enforcement. It's not that I am ultra compliant to the Marine Law, but I actually take the initiative whenever the Law is beneficial to the marine side at large and some shitter needs to be dealt with. Some examples:
1. I'm the Bravo SL and personally operated the mortar for like half an hour. Xenos have retreated to the caves it's late in the round so I join the frontline fight too. But then a mortar starts hitting the marines. I know there was nobody on the mortar and it's just using the preset coordinates from earlier. I rush back to the FOB and see a PFC just firing the mortar blindly. Before I even finish asking WTF, he starts shooting me. I gun him down.
2. I'm the Alpha SL, some Deltard FFs one of my guys and that idiots starts gunning the deltards, killing a couple. I help to gun him down. Then I help to revive the deltards, notify Delta SL on the command comms that I have the idiot handled and personally escort him into MPs hands.
3. I'm the Delta SL, roundstart some baldie starts immediately telling me to fuck off and shut up to the basic things like "stay around me at all times". If it was Alpha I won't even fucking let her deploy. Since it's Delta I do. And since it's Delta, other marines are already openly talking "so did we frag our SL yet?" Later on I see another marine trying to feed alcohol to her and she immediately PBs him. I see the opportunity and immediately gun her down. And none of the sqauddies actually came to her aid. Weird, huh?

The problem as it currently stands is that every time I risk being arrested by MPs and other, less experienced SLs may be reluctant to confront the shitters in situations like those for this reason.

As for OOCing of ML, I'm kinda with you, but this also returns us to the need for more good MPs, so that for example your classic shipside shenangians would have less of a chance of succeeding and it would be IMHO more entertaining in the process. I need my MPs to keep the basic discipline, but I also need people like you to provide them with some entertainment, so that they won't have to push crates for two hours while trying to IV drip the blended donut-water mix.