Formula for a good DarkRP server
As opposed to how it’s currently done
DarkRP servers have changed over the years. Back in the day it was much more focussed
around building things and fooling around, doing the silliest possible things. Currently the
focus appears to have shifted towards raiding, mugging and hitmen. There are many
complaints about this, including from me. DarkRP is much less fun than it used to be. The
rules are too strict and leave no room for creative roleplay. Players bitch too much about
rules being broken and admins are way too fucking keen on putting players on a roof when
even the slightest thing is beyond the precise protocol they are convinced the players are to
adhere to.
This is a guide on how to make and administrate a server that allows players to be more
creative in roleplay and admins to spend less time administrating. This guide will help
making your server less monotonous: less focussed around merely getting money and
items, and more around building a good RP story.
FPtje
Rules
Players joining a regular DarkRP server are met with an immense list of rules. Besides the
cheeky rule that not reading the rules is against the rules, many rules common nowadays
severely limit players’ freedom to be creative with their jobs. Those rules weren’t even
around in the first years of DarkRP. For the sake of players and admins, you should get rid of
them. Here’s a list:
Advert raids, mugs, hits and other RP actions
Why should a player ever announce their actions to anyone other than the players
directly involved? The only possible reason is logging the action for admins. After all,
when someone complains, the admins can check the logs for an advert. If there was
no advert, people get warned, if there was, some rooftop is called in. The problem is
that players now complain about people not advertising an otherwise perfectly valid
RP action. People are not necessarily punished for bad RP, but merely forgetting to
log their every single move. That’s terrible.
There are two solutions: scripts that log things automatically is the first. For things
that cannot be logged automatically you can tell players to complain anonymously
(through ULX’ “@” or DarkRP’s “/adminhelp”). Focus on catching players red handed
rather than acting on things in hindsight with just chat information.
FearRP
A player being mugged has one choice, and that is to give the money. If they have a
gun, FearRP states that they cannot use it. If there’s a nifty way out of the situation,
FearRP states that they cannot use it. All this is supposedly for the sake of realism.
Bitch you don’t watch the news.
FearRP makes mugging extremely overpowered. One message in chat and you’ll
either get your money or the other player is punished by an admin.
Get rid of this rule and force muggers to be more creative with mugging. Have them
mug people who look like they don’t have guns. Have them trap people in a room to
make sure they can’t run away.
FailRP
FailRP is a catch all and has become a way for players to force admins to resolve
disputes that would otherwise stay in-character. Example: a gun dealer steals a
shipment from a fellow gundealer. The victim gundealer calls FailRP because only
thieves or gangsters are allowed to steal. The thieving gundealer, however had a
valid RP reason for stealing those shipments: stolen shipments have a bigger profit
margin than bought shipments. Not only that, it hurts competition!
FailRP demands this gundealer to do only precisely that which the job description in
the F4 menu describes. Any step out of line can be considered FailRP.
Tell people to solve such disputes with the resources that they have. Tell the victim
gundealer, for example, to take revenge, to better secure their shipments or
otherwise be creative in finding a solution. This way, the admin can spend less time
intervening, and players are forced to solve their own problems.
Self supply
Gun dealers could buy shipments for themselves and refuse to sell. They prevent
other people from becoming gundealer and sell guns instead. From that perspective,
the self supply rule makes sense. Nevertheless, it’s not the best solution to the
problem. This is actually a problem players can resolve themselves by demoting the
gundealer. Before the self supply rule (and other rules), the demote mechanism was
very popular and effective to combat not only self supply, but also abusive cops,
inactive mob bosses and the like.
The demote mechanism gives players the power to deal with people who don’t do
their jobs properly. It really makes the rule, and thus an admin intervention
redundant.
(Admin) disrespect
Respect is earned, not demanded. Disrespect rules are an easy for admins to avoid
having to properly deal with criticism. Anyone who criticises the server or the
behaviour of admins can be gotten rid of with this rule. This gives admins the idea
that they’re always right, and that people who disagree need not be tolerated. This is
a very bad situation to be in. An admin’s job is not to be right, and an admin who can
learn from criticism is much better than one who cannot.
Admins should be capable of properly dealing with criticism. They are to be able to
listen to criticism even if it contains some curse words. They should be able to deal
with situations where they or other admins are accused of abuse or when aspects of
the server are criticised. Admins who punish people who give valid criticism should
be warned, or even demoted if they fail to grasp the concept of valid criticism.
NLR
Believe it or not, there was a time when NLR wasn’t a thing. People would come
back to their base continuously to try to save their weapons and money printers.
Raiders would watch the entrance for incoming revenge. They’d put the loot in a safe
place, only to wait for the victims’ attempt to get it back.
There’s little more frustrating than looking at your base being raided, able to
intervene and save your stuff, but not allowed to because of a rule or some NLR
script. The rules force a player to just wait and do nothing. Wait to go back to the
base and rebuild it all. They can’t really try to get their stuff back, since that would
require “knowledge” of the fact that it was stolen. DarkRP wasn’t designed for NLR.
Abolishing NLR would make fights bigger and more exciting. Grabbing the loot is
boring if the owners are dead and the admin makes sure they don’t come back. It’s
more of a challenge if you have to keep a lookout. It also encourages the police to try
to catch the criminals. After all, it’s much more rewarding if the police officers can
keep trying while the raid is going on. Don’t worry too much about ensuing chaos,
that’s precisely what DarkRP is designed for.
RDM
Whenever someone is unaware of or disagrees with the reason they were killed,
RDM is cried to the admins. Whether it’s because NLR or for other reasons, people
hate dying. RDM is an an opportunity to get an admin to punish the one who killed
you. Since admins are ill equipped to judge kills in hindsight, inappropriately calling
RDM very rarely ends up in a punishment. For players it’s profitable to call RDM for
almost any kill. This is sure to turn admins insane.
Loosen up on the rule. Sure, some kills may be random, but that only becomes a real
problem when the killer is actively out to piss people off. Those people can easily be
recognised by their disruptive behaviour, like the amount of people they’re killing and
the time between kills. As such, a rule against MassDM is much more efficient. It
gives players freedom to kill people when necessary, it encourages players to deal
with getting killed themselves, cutting admins some slack,
Administration
The focus of administrators should be less on controlling the way people roleplay, and more
on keeping the server clear of those out to ruin the game for others. One very important
aspect is to change the rules such that admin intervention is strongly discouraged in roleplay
situations. Another is to change the way admins intervene and interact with other players.
When done right, interventions can take considerably less time. Leaving more time for the
admin to play the game and for players to see a quick resolution to their problem. Below are
some (strong) recommendations.
Rooftop sessions
One popular approach to deal with rule breakers is to put them on a roof and talk
things over. The problem is that they alway take up a lot of time, and end up
frustrating the admin. People always lie, accusers will always exaggerate or even
make up claims, and MingeBags will always deny any wrongdoing. Rarely is there
ever anything to gain by interrogating people. It just doesn’t work.
Instead, try to catch people red handed. When someone complains about valid rules
being broken, assure them that you’re looking into it. Punish immediately if you can
definitively tell wrongdoing from the logs. Usually you can’t, though, so the best
option there is to keep a closer eye on the accused. This can be done with a spectate
tool, for example.
The most important thing here is to accept that despite logs you are ill equipped to
reason about the past, but brilliantly equipped to reason about the present and future.
Use that to your advantage.
Players demanding admin intervention
Players are used to the current way of playing DarkRP. Changing the culture in your
server should be both easy and difficult at the same time. Most of the struggle will
come from players demanding admins to intervene where they really shouldn’t. The
solution here is to say no. Admins should be encouraged to refuse to intervene in
situations that are better resolved in-character.
Saying no should be easy, deciding when to leave conflicts to the players and when
to actually intervene is difficult. You don’t want to be seen as lazy on one hand, but
you don’t want to intervene after every kill either. Use this as a rule of thumb: only
intervene when someone is actively trying to piss people off and trying to bully people
to leave the server.
When done right, players feel free to play DarkRP the way they like without people
continuously calling admins to punish them for some silly rule they broke.
Simultaneously, they would be assured that the real minges get kicked off the server.
Purchased perks
Servers often need money to stay alive, and owners might want to make a buck from
running a server. That’s alright, but there’s a vast range of choices to make on the kind of
things you can sell in a server. Some choices are better than others. With the right choices,
you can earn a buck while keeping the server fun.
Purchased ranks
Purchased ranks are seemingly a good way to both earn a buck and get
admins (or moderators) at the same time. There are very serious problems,
with this though. One very significant problem is that paid admins have more
power than admins chosen by the owner. You may have a rule that says says
you keep the right to demote admins as you please, but paid admins can get
away with much more than chosen admins before you take that drastic
decision. You don’t want to be called a scammer, someone who lets people
buy admin only to demote them a month later and keep the money. Even with
a refund policy you don’t want to lose your money. Demoting an admin then
would literally cost you money.
Paid admins obviously know this. They can do crazy shit and then get away
with twenty warnings that you really will demote them next time. It applies to
moderators and “VIPs” with extra features too. By selling ranks, you sell
power over your server. It’s not difficult to see why paid admins are much
more likely to abuse.
Get some people you trust and make them admin or superadmin. If you need
more admins, look at the people who frequent your server. It’s easy to demote
them if they fuck up, since there’s very little at stake. With just a bit of
diplomacy it’s much easier to have less drama around the demotion too. You
stay in charge.
Cosmetics and trivial gameplay advantages
A reliable way of getting cash while not doing much harm to the server. Cosmetics
are a clear way for donators to distinguish themselves from other players. Fancy
looking cars and the like should also be acceptable. Perhaps even small sums of
in-game money to be purchased with real money. Beware, thought, that finding the
right amount of money to sell can be very difficult: too little money and people won’t
think it’s worth it, too much and the players won’t have to do a single thing for their
money anymore, removing the gameplay challenge completely.
Think of it as small gameplay advantages that give the player an illusion of getting an
advantage while in reality it’s almost nothing. Jump and walk speed boosts are also
good candidates: players rarely have to jump and a small walking boost just lets you
get around a bit faster. Make sure not to add a sprint boost, though: donators would
be able to run from the cops very easily, which is too a big gameplay advantage.
Balance is key. Keep it in mind.
Paid jobs could also be an option, but again, make sure not to give them too many
advantages. Also make sure not to overwhelm non-paying players with (almost) more
paid jobs than unpaid ones. It’s very discouraging if a server comes across as though
you can’t really play if you don’t donate.
Server Economy
A badly balanced server can lead to either players hoarding money for too long before doing
anything or spending money as if they didn’t work for it. Ideally there exists some perfect
balance where you have to work for your money, but don’t have to grind for too long. The
perfect balance sadly won’t exist, but with just a little effort, you can get pretty close to it.
There are two main questions here: how players should earn money and how they should
spend it. In vanilla DarkRP, money is earned (and spent) with money printers, salary, guns
and drugs, obviously, but also through player interactions, like /dropmoney and events, such
as the lottery. Your server may have many more ways to both earn and spend money, but
how balanced is it?
Money printers, job salary and some other things create money from thin air. Buying
something from the F4 menu, buying doors and other things have money disappear into thin
air. A big part of the balance lies in those two flows being more or less equal.
A second major part of the balance lies in the gameplay mechanics of both money
generating and consuming elements and how they affect players’ behaviour. The money
printer, for example, requires protection and are often hidden. Interaction between players
around money printers is both rare and often hostile. That and the waiting for and picking up
of money packets is frustratingly boring.
In a good server, the ways to earn and spend money encourage player interaction. Think of
trading, public events, jobs that provide services for money or just a hobo being tipped for
their amazing reproduction of Hitler’s speech over the microphone. There are many different
opinions on how to get the economy right. Try some things out, see what sticks and what
doesn’t. Ultimately it’s different for every server anyway.
