- Joined
- Oct 5, 2024
- Messages
- 113
- Reaction score
- 104
- Points
- 43
Following the feedback from the forums it seems a lot of you want the chance to play antagonists. This thread serves as the founding of that opportunity. Compiling the ideas of many admins, GMs, and players I hope this suits everyone's desires. This thread will serve as an invitation for people to reach out to me with questions. Please reach out to me and I'll post any relevant questions with answers here for the public. You're also welcome to post your questions here. I'll do my best to reply to the most pressing ones.
This will serve as a preliminary chance to address everyone's concerns and issues. I am expecting to change ideas and try new things until this is something the community as a whole enjoys. In nearly every HL2 setting there's a repeated problem of over zealous, and unaccountable cliques. This goes against everything Idyllic stands for and from the get go I want to create something that goes strongly against the repeated woes. Everyone in this faction will be extremely vetted and scrutinized. I will be creating a robust system of accountability to let the public at large know of any larger scandals, or wrong doings.
With that said I'd like to explain what I've personally created. HORIZON is meant to be an RPF squad with the purpose of creating a more humanized threat for the rebels. This is NOT an intelligence or special forces PK squad. We will never have HORIZON infiltrate you and metagame. This is a group of staunchly loyal, autonomous, independent, minimally trained, and low investment soldiers for the Combine. Their objective is to deal with any resistance threats on the periphery of important Combine infrastructure. Think of it as your local police department having a gang violence task force. HORIZON will be given better equipment than your usual RPF grunt given their task, but are far below the standards of OTF. They are meant to be functional for their task given a week's worth of food, water, and bullets. The conditions they work in are similar to the rebels, but they're given an occasional day off and horribly unreliable support from dispatch. This is not an experience you could get in another HL2 server, and you will get plenty of chances to be a bad ass. I want everyone playing this to feel like they're getting unique experience they've never had before.
Requirements for joining and playing.
In order to be part of this squad you have to routinely and regularly volunteer to play RPF/OTF event characters for larger rebel events. You will still be compensated with credits for your rebel when you do. Joining this squad is a unique and special opportunity, so we ask that you help us out in this regard. You will be given an experience you cannot get anywhere else.
You are not allowed to play these characters without admin permission. We still need a healthy rebel playerbase, and want to have it continue to be that way. Common examples of when you'll be approved to do so are on high player count times, or when no one is on at all. This is also to prevent needless OOC drama and bickering from PVP. I made deliberate designs to reduce OOC drama and friction from the moment planning started for MoF.
There will be an OOC vetting and application in my DMs (Forum or Discord). Expect this to be brutal, and every tiny flaw to be nitpicked. You will still have a chance to be approved even if there are minor issues present. We want to ensure people playing in HORIZON have put effort and investment into their character's given the responsibility of being an antagonist. There will be a brief IC interview to introduce your character into the faction. This is meant to test certain qualities of your character to see if you're an appropriate fit. This is brief and largely an on boarding process. It also serves to test you've put thought into how your character presents themselves.
If you'd like to play in this faction contact me directly. Forums or discord both work as means to reach out.
Handling complaints.
This is an extremely difficult thing to manage. I think it's vital given we're allowing this novel experience. There's a lot of room for abuse and harm to the story line should the wrong people get accepted. If you have a complaint please exercise due caution in how you report it. I am exceptionally wary in keeping this community drama free. I appreciate how not only in the admin team, but in the community at large we can disagree without getting heated. If something is personalized to an individual character I would prefer you post it to the authorizations post so staff and process it together. If you have a broad concern about larger patterns of behavior I greatly encourage you to post them to the community at large. I would be very upset if this faction is seen as something similar to a generic PK death squad.
Lastly, complaints against individuals will be categorized into three broad categories. The goal is for this to be as fair as I can be to the wider community and those who are playing in this faction. The categories are accepted, denied, and neutral, and will be tied to the level of proof something has. It's incredibly hard to prove certain malicious actions, but its a necessary accountability for an antagonist faction. A single accepted complaint is often all one will need to be removed from the faction, and in the worst cases bans. However, in the name of fairness only accepted complaints will be listed publicly for the wider community. If you have a direct and personal need for the number of complaints filed against someone (not the contents) I may provide it to you. Keep in mind I want to be fair to those playing within this faction. I do not want people in this faction to feel belittled or under the constant target of undue harassment. You may face false consequences for making misleading or fake complaints.
Leadership.
One of my main concerns when creating the RPF for MoF was discouraging the traditional drama producing hierarchy. I still remember vividly one of you freaking out in the discord chat worrying you had new OOC responsibilities because Mickee decided to blindly promote you on the first day. The traditional way of doing it promotes at a lot of corruption and clique encouraging behaviour. Those at the top of squads are given little accountability with who they promote and accept. While it is far too complicated to list out how I'm going to do this in a couple of paragraphs I assure you stopping this unacceptable behaviour is my first priority.
At the immediate introduction of the squad the hierarchy will largely be flat, and those who best match how I like HORIZON to be managed will get promotions. However, I want to prevent a culture of sucking up to others to gain a new rank. I will do my best to discuss with not just the heads of HORIZON, but the lower members themselves what they'd like to see in this regard. Power must be loosely leveled out, and not concentrated. I will do my best to decouple IC status from OOC status. By nature this will be very hard to do, but I assure you I will give it my all.
This will serve as a preliminary chance to address everyone's concerns and issues. I am expecting to change ideas and try new things until this is something the community as a whole enjoys. In nearly every HL2 setting there's a repeated problem of over zealous, and unaccountable cliques. This goes against everything Idyllic stands for and from the get go I want to create something that goes strongly against the repeated woes. Everyone in this faction will be extremely vetted and scrutinized. I will be creating a robust system of accountability to let the public at large know of any larger scandals, or wrong doings.
With that said I'd like to explain what I've personally created. HORIZON is meant to be an RPF squad with the purpose of creating a more humanized threat for the rebels. This is NOT an intelligence or special forces PK squad. We will never have HORIZON infiltrate you and metagame. This is a group of staunchly loyal, autonomous, independent, minimally trained, and low investment soldiers for the Combine. Their objective is to deal with any resistance threats on the periphery of important Combine infrastructure. Think of it as your local police department having a gang violence task force. HORIZON will be given better equipment than your usual RPF grunt given their task, but are far below the standards of OTF. They are meant to be functional for their task given a week's worth of food, water, and bullets. The conditions they work in are similar to the rebels, but they're given an occasional day off and horribly unreliable support from dispatch. This is not an experience you could get in another HL2 server, and you will get plenty of chances to be a bad ass. I want everyone playing this to feel like they're getting unique experience they've never had before.
Requirements for joining and playing.
In order to be part of this squad you have to routinely and regularly volunteer to play RPF/OTF event characters for larger rebel events. You will still be compensated with credits for your rebel when you do. Joining this squad is a unique and special opportunity, so we ask that you help us out in this regard. You will be given an experience you cannot get anywhere else.
You are not allowed to play these characters without admin permission. We still need a healthy rebel playerbase, and want to have it continue to be that way. Common examples of when you'll be approved to do so are on high player count times, or when no one is on at all. This is also to prevent needless OOC drama and bickering from PVP. I made deliberate designs to reduce OOC drama and friction from the moment planning started for MoF.
There will be an OOC vetting and application in my DMs (Forum or Discord). Expect this to be brutal, and every tiny flaw to be nitpicked. You will still have a chance to be approved even if there are minor issues present. We want to ensure people playing in HORIZON have put effort and investment into their character's given the responsibility of being an antagonist. There will be a brief IC interview to introduce your character into the faction. This is meant to test certain qualities of your character to see if you're an appropriate fit. This is brief and largely an on boarding process. It also serves to test you've put thought into how your character presents themselves.
If you'd like to play in this faction contact me directly. Forums or discord both work as means to reach out.
Handling complaints.
This is an extremely difficult thing to manage. I think it's vital given we're allowing this novel experience. There's a lot of room for abuse and harm to the story line should the wrong people get accepted. If you have a complaint please exercise due caution in how you report it. I am exceptionally wary in keeping this community drama free. I appreciate how not only in the admin team, but in the community at large we can disagree without getting heated. If something is personalized to an individual character I would prefer you post it to the authorizations post so staff and process it together. If you have a broad concern about larger patterns of behavior I greatly encourage you to post them to the community at large. I would be very upset if this faction is seen as something similar to a generic PK death squad.
Lastly, complaints against individuals will be categorized into three broad categories. The goal is for this to be as fair as I can be to the wider community and those who are playing in this faction. The categories are accepted, denied, and neutral, and will be tied to the level of proof something has. It's incredibly hard to prove certain malicious actions, but its a necessary accountability for an antagonist faction. A single accepted complaint is often all one will need to be removed from the faction, and in the worst cases bans. However, in the name of fairness only accepted complaints will be listed publicly for the wider community. If you have a direct and personal need for the number of complaints filed against someone (not the contents) I may provide it to you. Keep in mind I want to be fair to those playing within this faction. I do not want people in this faction to feel belittled or under the constant target of undue harassment. You may face false consequences for making misleading or fake complaints.
Leadership.
One of my main concerns when creating the RPF for MoF was discouraging the traditional drama producing hierarchy. I still remember vividly one of you freaking out in the discord chat worrying you had new OOC responsibilities because Mickee decided to blindly promote you on the first day. The traditional way of doing it promotes at a lot of corruption and clique encouraging behaviour. Those at the top of squads are given little accountability with who they promote and accept. While it is far too complicated to list out how I'm going to do this in a couple of paragraphs I assure you stopping this unacceptable behaviour is my first priority.
At the immediate introduction of the squad the hierarchy will largely be flat, and those who best match how I like HORIZON to be managed will get promotions. However, I want to prevent a culture of sucking up to others to gain a new rank. I will do my best to discuss with not just the heads of HORIZON, but the lower members themselves what they'd like to see in this regard. Power must be loosely leveled out, and not concentrated. I will do my best to decouple IC status from OOC status. By nature this will be very hard to do, but I assure you I will give it my all.
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