
Originally Posted by
NoahKirchner
Colonial Marines, in almost every aspect in its design, is not conducive to genuine HRP, and anyone who wants to enforce a HRP standard will quickly find that to be impossible.
First and foremost, in CM, there is no randomization - there is no variation. Every single round, marines are deployed with the exact same equipment, on the exact same colonies (with the exact same configurations, possible hive locations, threats, problems with the colony and meta strategies), facing the exact same enemies and with the exact same objective every single round until we all die. You cannot have organic roleplay in these situations, because organic roleplay requires the player to be responding to situations. In a perfect world, the roleplay that the queen would undertake (using new strategies with mechanics to support them) would effect the commander, causing him to roleplay to find a solution to the problem that the queen is causing, and sweeping everyone in the middle up in this tide of arpee. Unfortunately, this is currently an impossibility. There is no surprise when playing CM, and if you do not use that month's meta strategy, not only are you at a disadvantage, but you are at a genuine risk of putting yourself out of the round for the next 2 hours and being incapable of playing. So, naturally, people take whatever gun does the most lol worthy damage, metarush the hive and try to kill aliens because there is no point in RPing on CM. It is not a fulfilling after the four hundredth time the CO gives briefing where he sends bravo to FOB duty, alpha and delta to scout and charlie to power. I'm pretty certain it's not fulfilling for the admins either - what's the point of responding to a CL fax if every round you get the exact same 8 faxes: "I just woke up" "commander gave briefing, operation started" "oh no xenos on the planet" "hey look survivors" "marines are losing" "marines evacuated" "OH GOD HELP" "OH GOD HELP". It's boring.
So with that, I am going to make an argument that silly "LRP" shenanigans are actually the highest RP actions undertaken on the server. You might say "Noah you fucking braindead retard, that's ridiculous, people goofing off before briefing is obviously nonsensical, nobody would do that IRL" - and you're right. Nobody WOULD do that IRL, but this also isn't IRL, goofy roleplay is still roleplay. It is possible to play a goofy character, and as long as you remain in character, it is still roleplay, and it is certainly more interesting and organic than ancient funny pfc (69) is. And to add onto this, gimmick commanders accomplish what CM seems to be designed to actively discourage: they make rounds unique and interesting. Having a round where Comrade Carson forces you down to the planet with a gun at your back, BEing anyone who retreats until you rush the hive is fucking hilarious and certainly far more memorable than big red round 4,323 where you stand around in the FOB talking about "holy shit man these fucking red dogs man they're gonna kill us!" This isn't to say that traditionally HRP captains or other roles are not appreciated, and every now and then a serious round is nice to have, but that doesn't mean that goofy ones should be banned to satisfy the RPboner or powerboner of people who obviously haven't actually tried playing a HRP character for more than a few rounds in a row.
If CM is to be medium or high rp, the mechanics need to represent that. CM would need new enemies, new colonial circumstances/disasters (maybe instead of comms being out there's a big fuckoff sandstorm you have to deal with on big red that caused the interference, maybe LV is a big marshy mess and the river overflowed up the central barrens and to the northern doors of hydro, maybe there's a snowstorm on ice colony or dangerous other wildlife on trijent dam that the marines have to try to deal with), and some kind of variance in the objectives for each round. Sure, killing the benomorphs can remain the same, but maybe there is an elite PMC squad trapped planetside that the marines need to rescue for the CL, or maybe the power system on the planet needs to be fixed before it starts leaking radioactive material everywhere and giving marines cancer. My point is that the more mechanics you have, and the more events you have, the more organic the RP is in the round, but until then CM will remain lrp because rping is fucking boring on CM. If I want to RP, I can go to any other server and have more fulfilling RP because the mechanics support it better there, but so much of CM was gutted to prevent powergaming that sometimes it feels like it was done on purpose to stifle actual roleplay.