The problem with roleplaying in Colonial Marines

[davidofmk771]

This thread doesn't really seem to have any point besides senseless complaining. If what you want is real punishments for all squaddies who refuse to follow orders, you're insane. Nobody wants to be at the whim of somebody who cannot adjust their expectations to meet 80% of the playerbase. It's just not reasonable. Squad leaders are already being punished for not playing the way the minority wants them to, so whats the problem here?
Insubordination was a major factor in the movie this game was based on, recklessness was a major factor in that same movie. People do not want an ULTRA-REALISTIC FOB SIMULATOR and you have to adjust how you play command roles if you want to keep up with that. There are definitely ways to make people do something they otherwise wouldn't want to do (such as ordering squads to slowly expand the FOB rather than sit around and have contextless conversations with internet people they don't know; we could easily just join a chat room for THAT).
Beyond some sort of ingame mechanics like an 'Issue Order' type verb that command roles can use to effect marines outside of their FOV (such as through OW consoles) I see no reasonable solution to this problem some people seem to be having.

[Lumdor]

If you want people to listen to you or do what you say get your name known. This isn’t baystation, you aren’t expected to RP if you want you could play every round and not say a word and go shoot bean bois.

People won’t listen to you if they don’t know you or respect you. Yes the rounds start over, but that does not make people forget if you were a shit head commander the round before.

[Gnorse]

If some marines literally don't care enough to follow your orders, it could mean two things :
-They're newbies who literally don't know how to do anything.
-they have literally never heard of you and think you're some sort of baldie.
You don't even want the first type to follow you.
Second type, you gotta earn their trust.

[Rohesie]

I've always found funny when people try to picture CM as a serious RP server. Come on. When the host plays a talking cat that accuses the commander of bestiality and sexual abuse, and a giant colored corgi the size of a dropship is spawned roaming the Almayer you know RP is not really that high in focus.

[kastion]

this thread is full of why I want xeno usernames or ckeys and why I dont understand why they wont give them to us. As everyone else pointed out if you aint well known and robust no ones gonna listen to you. Ya you have to listen to the queen, but most people just act like they are listening until the queen quits paying attention. No one listens to leaders, and no especially listens to random xenos.

[ThesoldierLLJK]

*plays muslim commander*
*gets critically wounded by xenos*
*strapped to medbay stretcher*
PFC Sleepy Retard: Local Muslim Commander gets yeeted on by aliens, news at 11

God I love CM

[Sleepy Retard]

*plays muslim commander*
*gets critically wounded by xenos*
*strapped to medbay stretcher*
PFC Sleepy Retard: Local Muslim Commander gets yeeted on by aliens, news at 11

God I love CM

more at 11*

[adrenalinetooth]

This thread doesn't really seem to have any point besides senseless complaining.

The only viable solution would kill the playerbase as I mentioned, so yes this is pure complaining and venting at the fact that there is no solution. Why have all of these fancy leadership roles if they are pointless? The most frustrating excuse is you need to "earn respect". Sorry, but that's not how a chain of command works. If your superior tells you to do something, you do it or you get court marshalled, brigged, transferred out of the unit, etc.

Can you imagine if soldiers deployed overseas onto the battlefield under a new CO and had to "earn the respect" of their commander before doing anything? The notion is so stupid I don't know how anyone can believe it. Sure, you can hate your commander, but you'll still have to begrudgingly listen to him. And that won't mean people won't hate him behind his back when he isn't around or try to trip him up.

[Swagile]

The only viable solution would kill the playerbase as I mentioned, so yes this is pure complaining and venting at the fact that there is no solution. Why have all of these fancy leadership roles if they are pointless? The most frustrating excuse is you need to "earn respect". Sorry, but that's not how a chain of command works. If your superior tells you to do something, you do it or you get court marshalled, brigged, transferred out of the unit, etc.

Can you imagine if soldiers deployed overseas onto the battlefield under a new CO and had to "earn the respect" of their commander before doing anything? The notion is so stupid I don't know how anyone can believe it. Sure, you can hate your commander, but you'll still have to begrudgingly listen to him. And that won't mean people won't hate him behind his back when he isn't around or try to trip him up.

actually

you have to earn the respect of your men in all command positions

the greatest commanders in history, both from a lowly squad leader, to a Admiral, were all respected by their men and their men would go to hell and back with them even if there was 0 chance of survival

i get your point, but respect does come into play as well

[ThesoldierLLJK]

Can you imagine if soldiers deployed overseas onto the battlefield under a new CO and had to "earn the respect" of their commander before doing anything?

It's a videogame played by mostly people age 16-30, not a professional fighting force of a nation.

If someone wants to be an insubordinate little shit and not follow orders and its breaking the "play your role" rule, ahelp it.
If they have a RP reason for it, you handle it IC. The new CoC guidelines authorize corporal punishment for Commanders who are victims of disrespect/insubordination.

[Butlerblock]

local group of people start regularly playing a low-rp tdm server for it's mechanics alongside children and griefers, with no incentive to roleplay or act like actual soldiers.

complains when they see people not acting like high-rp milsim activists.

[CABAL]

Another solution is to give actuall, clearly visible and "fast working" benefits for obeying orders and drawbacks for not doing it. Permanent "aura" around SL to encourage staying around.
Maybe give some kind of "superior insult" which lowers "internal character morale" (slower speed, healing, worse accuracy etc) as a punishment from command. SO's and SL's would be the best roles to apply it to nasty marines.
We really can't enforce any RP standards since it's the biggest combat server which translates to the biggest amount of "children and griefers", but even they could see that behaving "good" would give them advantage.

In TF2 for example it's made this way. Medic could pocket one player, but Ubercharge fills slower on overhealed target, so "spread healing" benefits medic.

[Swagile]

Another solution is to give actuall, clearly visible and "fast working" benefits for obeying orders and drawbacks for not doing it. Permanent "aura" around SL to encourage staying around.
Maybe give some kind of "superior insult" which lowers "internal character morale" (slower speed, healing, worse accuracy etc) as a punishment from command. SO's and SL's would be the best roles to apply it to nasty marines.
We really can't enforce any RP standards since it's the biggest combat server which translates to the biggest amount of "children and griefers", but even they could see that behaving "good" would give them advantage.

In TF2 for example it's made this way. Medic could pocket one player, but Ubercharge fills slower on overhealed target, so "spread healing" benefits medic.

honestly things like this would work better

rules only get you so far on a server with 100 + players; you can't watch them all

but if you give players ways to regulate each other, you have a better server in general

[Renomaki]

If you want people to listen to you or do what you say get your name known. This isn’t baystation, you aren’t expected to RP if you want you could play every round and not say a word and go shoot bean bois.

People won’t listen to you if they don’t know you or respect you. Yes the rounds start over, but that does not make people forget if you were a shit head commander the round before.

To be honest, even if they KNOW who you are, they won't always listen to you. They might trust you more (mostly if you are a combat role such as a marine), but if you are a commanding officer, then it is all up to chance...

Sometimes you have a squad of loyalist who'll gladly listen to you and move where you need them to go or do important tactical tasks (such as securing the rear during an assault or performing a flank).

Most of the time, though, you'll have a squad that either only partially listens to you (mainly due to the marines in said squads refusing to listen to the NCO, AKA a chain of command failure), or the squad itself just fucks off and does whatever it wants, or in some cases tells YOU what to do as commander, rather than you calling the shots.

The commander's job is to organize his marines and complete the mission to an acceptable degree, and a lot of his job involves gathering field intelligence via his scouts and NCOs, who'll no doubt provide their opinions on the matter for the CO to mull over and consider while planning his next move. But when marines start to give the COMMANDER orders and berate him for not doing things THEIR way, then the whole point of being a commander becomes moot...

Honestly, I wish there was more incentives to respect and follow the chain of command, and not just the CO, but the NCOs too. Encourage squads to stick together and cooperate more, encourage NCOs to respect their CO and SOs more, and hell, do the same for SO/CO relationships, since lemme tell you, it is not all that uncommon for your own STAFF OFFICERS to shit-talk you and disobey your orders.

But since we are all simple humans, we need a sort of reward system to promote good behavior. The ORDER system that is currently in game is not good enough as of right now, they need something more passive and constant, and medals are a joke... The question is WHAT?

[Swagile]

Issue Reprimand

going off CABAL's idea, if you get Reprimanded by a SL, SO, XO, or CO, you get a debuff on pain threshold, accuracy, and speed

this is a PERMANENT DEBUFF and exists EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT NEAR THE PERSON IN QUESTION; however, you can only have so many Reprimands active (if you SL, 2-3 people, SO gets more, and so on based on leadership skills)

this is to balance possible grief of one SL just mass reprimanding people, but is a tool SL can keep in his pocket for a few of the marines that just unga their way into the darkness. sure there will still be people who unga, but this will reduce the amount who do so significantly.

[kastion]

Issue Reprimand

going off CABAL's idea, if you get Reprimanded by a SL, SO, XO, or CO, you get a debuff on pain threshold, accuracy, and speed

this is a PERMANENT DEBUFF and exists EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT NEAR THE PERSON IN QUESTION; however, you can only have so many Reprimands active (if you SL, 2-3 people, SO gets more, and so on based on leadership skills)

this is to balance possible grief of one SL just mass reprimanding people, but is a tool SL can keep in his pocket for a few of the marines that just unga their way into the darkness. sure there will still be people who unga, but this will reduce the amount who do so significantly.

LOL that would be so bad, cases of friendly fire would go up like crazy

[adrenalinetooth]

Here's a solution that I proposed months before (and that no one liked):

Marines not listening to you as commander? Then they don't get to use your equipment. The commander should have the ability to toggle an ID lock on marine's weapons so they can't fire, basically fucking their fun time over if they choose not to listen.

The commander's a whitelisted role - It would be a lot of responsibility for the CO and I would be interested to see how they use it.

[kastion]

Here's a solution that I proposed months before (and that no one liked):

Marines not listening to you as commander? Then they don't get to use your equipment. The commander should have the ability to toggle an ID lock on marine's weapons so they can't fire, basically fucking their fun time over if they choose not to listen.

This made me think of a new idea for req being able to lock crates to a squad so only htat squad can open them. Like fob materials for fob squad so others don't jack their stuff.

[Dolth]

If you want people to listen to you or do what you say get your name known. This isn’t baystation, you aren’t expected to RP if you want you could play every round and not say a word and go shoot bean bois.

People won’t listen to you if they don’t know you or respect you. Yes the rounds start over, but that does not make people forget if you were a shit head commander the round before.

What he said.

I mean. We have BE for insults or hooliganism you know.
Since when an officer kill a marine because he is an insubordinating window-breaking cunt? Or because he yelled ligma at the CO? Well.

Since we're LRP and a proper RP is far from our server.

But hey, we are having fun aswell

[waswar]

It would be nice to have more focus on roleplay. I try to interact through the whole rounds when I’m not tired as shit and thus can form a coherent thought. Having some rewards or even nifty little bonuses in some way would be cool, like perhaps variable ranks and load outs or something, combined with the idea of reprimanding.

Of course, some arguing is good. I always try to call out my SL if they rush through areas or begin moving in a hallway/limited vision area after a stop without noticing or collecting ya, as it’s a good way to leave half your squad behind, and is a major source for either keeping up with the SL and dying due to lack of manpower in one case, or being SO and having fun trying to get the lost marines to dawdle to their SL.

There seems to always be new players though, I’m not sure how/if it could work. Some things like LSRP had a huge amount of players in spite of having a white list but idk if SS13 has such resources.

[DefinitelyAlone0309]

I wouldn't want some bullshit punishment like adrenaline's "equipment ban" or something like that. Just give rewards or bonus to people that take the time to RP. I remember having seen Christine as a CO once RP with the UPP so much that we were rewarded with a UPP ERT to fight the xeno alongside the losing marines. Just something like that, but smaller and more widespread.

[Dolth]

It would be nice to have more focus on roleplay. I try to interact through the whole rounds when I’m not tired as shit and thus can form a coherent thought. Having some rewards or even nifty little bonuses in some way would be cool, like perhaps variable ranks and load outs or something, combined with the idea of reprimanding.

Of course, some arguing is good. I always try to call out my SL if they rush through areas or begin moving in a hallway/limited vision area after a stop without noticing or collecting ya, as it’s a good way to leave half your squad behind, and is a major source for either keeping up with the SL and dying due to lack of manpower in one case, or being SO and having fun trying to get the lost marines to dawdle to their SL.

There seems to always be new players though, I’m not sure how/if it could work. Some things like LSRP had a huge amount of players in spite of having a white list but idk if SS13 has such resources.

Hell yes, LSRP was EPIC by far.

Now the difference comes from here: On LSRP you are FORCED to read rules before creating your character THEN you have a couple of randomized questions, all of them involving different RP situatiions.

And then, everything was meant to be HRP, jobs were dealt with other players, through forum RP format posts etc. The whole game was about RPing.

On CM. The game goes around a TDM and there are no way to check if someone did read the rules or not. Which is why lot of new player are led into unproper escalations.
But beside that, the only -MANDATORY- required to have at least a spark of RP are written and effective only in TDM circumstances.

Basically it means, if you don't tell people what's exactly metagaming and powergaming, but then you tell them rushing the hive is meta, they are obviously not gonna understand why chasing an hostile doggo UNTIL you find the hive, isn't metagaming.

Anyway to make it short, since the few rules are mostly involving examples and not RP generalities (really, you can NOT pretend to roleplay if you don't understand meta/power at very least) AND because the game is TDM oriented AND because rules are not enfirced upon player joining. Then yes, we will have troubles with RP on CM.

While we're at it; yes, meta-rushing was enforced 2-3 years ago (first LV had no fog).Yes, evacuating on first facehugger before a survivor had told you OR the FIRST marine had bursted, that was enforced too. Rushing to get brown/black webbing and EVA helmets was enforced too.
RP quality just lowered with time.

And also, no fucking officer of sane mind would kill someone for a past action. Or over a fucking insult and few punches. Or because he killed marines with an OB.
Or because an SO insubordinate and doesn't want to shoot the OB that would save marine.

As sad as it is, we're LRP now, and I find it sad to have to be a pred in order to get proper RP with just 1 to 3 other players.

Although I still love CM <3
Also I would TL:DR if I was you.

[Karmac]

Okay I'm not even gonna bother reading anyones responses to this, but if you're coming into a game with a main selling point of: its literally dedicated team deathmatch with humans vs aliens, and expecting roleplay, you are a fucking retard

[KennyTGuy]

Okay I'm not even gonna bother reading anyones responses to this, but if you're coming into a game with a main selling point of: its literally dedicated team deathmatch with humans vs aliens, and expecting roleplay, you are a fucking retard

More indicative of a simple mind if you cant do both.

Real life unga here.

[Dolth]

Okay I'm not even gonna bother reading anyones responses to this, but if you're coming into a game with a main selling point of: its literally dedicated team deathmatch with humans vs aliens, and expecting roleplay, you are a fucking retard

Idk it was not high quality but still proper RP few years ago, according to le rules y'know. Plus server says MRP, at some point you gotta be consistent m8.

Funniest here is the fact you got CO v2 whitelist which is expected to be HRP yet you unga and yeet on RP.