Phase Four

Phase Four, how viable of a schema is it player wise? If a Phase Four server cropped up just today, what would it have to be doing different for you to say "I want to play that." I bought Phase Four and Cider Two a couple years ago, and both of my keys have just been sitting collecting dust for the past little while. I like Phase Four as a concept, and I like servers that run Phase Four. But does the community? What do you guys think can be done with Phase Four to make it more fun and long lasting?

 

release dust

 

Will soon.

 

It's not very practical for GMODRP imo. People tend to just shoot everyone on sight and there's a lot of circlejerk groups who just hole up in a base made entirely of those cargo door things.

 

I'd love to do that, but when you do that there is a steep player decrease after the first day. People get bored quick.

 

It's pretty similar to Rust, except with abilities and a lack of complex base building. If it wasn't such a bore to get money it'd be a funner gamemode. Buying printers, hiding in a corner, and doing nothing, is how you make most of your money. And then there's the fact that newer players are always at the mercy of older players. At least there's wipes in Rust, which means no one is in power forever. Phase Four without wipes means you're fucking yourself over every minute you're not grinding cash, because somebody else probably is.

 

There's too much of a power gap between new players and those that have played since the start. It becomes increasingly difficult to build up wealth the later you get involved with the server, unless you join a well established group.

 

make shit harder to get

 

Well as a potential future customer for Phase 4 I think the best possible solution to the problem is just having sql wipes, whether it's monthly quarterly or yearly I am yet unsure but it seems to be the only way to stop it becoming a shit fest.

 

What about making it easy to get rich, and just as easy to become poor? This could be applied to the grinding aspects, here's some of the grinding aspects for example: Increasing attributes, accumulating money, accumulated items, forming factions, etc. I think if it was something that's easy to get into then that'd be good (streamlining the creation of factions + joining them, making it easier to level up, and making it easier to accumulate wealth). It'd also be good to see if one could simply pop on the server and gain enough wealth so that they could have fun just as much as the next guy.

 

I'm glad to see you are interested in Phase Four / Experiment still kuro. It definitely is a special schema, I will be putting my own Phase Four server up soon enough (It's not the recent remake version however). I'll be sure to take notes and try to give some feedback on how to resolve the core issues with the schema.

 

I've been playing around with several ideas in my head, stuff that helps the little guys take the big guys down easier, wipe periods was one of those ideas [first of every month, everything is reset.]

another idea was, better gear was locked behind time, so the first day or two, people would only have access to basic rudimentary melee weapons, no glocks or anything, this went with the wipe system to make sure everyone had time to prepare.

even more -- alliances hinder your ability to perform solo, the more people in your alliance that have X perk, the more it costs, same going for gear, if 6 people in your alliance have duplexians, LPR/M4's .etc then it costs... say x3 as much, for everyone, this was per person per item too, winding down if one man had too much, so one man having 100 zipties isn't as much of a burden as 10 men having 10 zipties.

'creeds' were an idea floating around, that alliance leader(s) can unlock, basically changing the alliance entirely, I needed a lot more though for it to be effective.

Spoiler: Creeds

Creed: Brotherhood - When a member is inducted, they change their last name to the name of the alliance.

Creed: Stronghold - Prop health is increased based on number of alliance members online.

Creed: Evil Cult - All members of the alliance are forced to have bad karma.

Creed: Lawful Cult - All members of the alliance are forced to have good karma.

Creed: Neutrality - All members of the alliance are locked to having max 25 of each karma.

Creed: Brothers - Your alliance is locked to two members, you both take on the name of the Alliance for your surname, and your cash gain is doubled from printers.

Spoiler: augment ideas

Martyrdom - When you die, drop a low powered explosive grenade.
Alliance Cap to start is 3. -- for this to work even remotely, there'd need to be bonuses for being in alliances in the first place, tough system to balance.
Leadership - Increases the maximum people in your alliance to 5, allows you to buy the General augment.

Legion - Increases the maximum people in your alliance to 7.

General - Lifts the limit of maximum people in your alliance, but you cannot adopt a Creed.

Connected Faith - For every member of your alliance, shipment prices are decreased by .10%.

Reverse Spell - Decreases the damage enemies of your alliance do to you, in turn the damage you do to them is also decreased.

Mirror Mirror - Gain the ability to flip your karma to the other end of the spectrum, only when you are at the max of that karma.

Two Ton Tomb - Saint and Sinner tombs cost half as much.

Neutral Wasteland - You are a neutral party, you cannot join alliances, you gain several benefits for this, and you can turn in your neutrality at any time for 20,000 cash.

Full Force Forward - You take less damage when hit from the front, but more in the back.

One Punch Man… Sort of. - The amount of punches it takes to knock someone out is halved.

Timed Expose - When you die, your respawn time is quadrupled, but you respawn with heavy kevlar.

Heartstopper - You can stop a dying characters heart, killing them.

Cardiomyopathy - Instead of being fully revived, you are revived to the 'slowly dying' state.

Defending Aegis - Coming to the aid of others grants you bonuses, attacking others without reason grants you defects.

No Fly Zone - The damage you do to jetpacks is doubled.

Doctor - Healing others grants you karma.

Do No Harm - Whenever you kill another player, you lose this perk and it’s bonuses.

Jetpacks would have their own 'damage' in the F1 menu, and take damage from the chest. .etc

As more and more people had more 'worth' you'd also start with more cash, people who were 'inactive' [not logged on for a week] did not apply to this.

I'm pretty passionate about P4, as you know, of course; these were all concepts in my head, and some of them have come to life in the script itself, but I haven't been very active in continuing onward.

But if you want ideas, those are the ones that have crossed my mind several times.

 

I'm sure someone can come up with a non-restrictive system to balance it out.

 

A big thing that kept people from killing eachother on sight was the whole rule stating you can't kill people with less than x amount of cash in gear and the sorts. Mugging however was allowed.