I'd like to further a conversation. TLDR: A handicap stress system to manage damage dealt is not OP-AF nor is it RP-AF. So with the stress system being the attempt to curb random violence, how is realistically relevant in the aspect of role playing in a role playing game? (I understand it can be turned off on private servers and thank you for allowing that, but humor me.) The thing about violence is that's its a sometimes quick and powerful force causing fight or flight in a persons though process on what to do and how to handle the situation etc. Its sometimes so quick that the person has zero time to react or respond. Creating a handicap around that just doesn't seem to fit in an RPG like this that's focusing on levels of the recreation of the real world. I get that you want people to have fun and enjoy this gaming experience but experiencing it along side other people is half the risk isn't it? Not knowing what these other players will do at any given moment, and how they may respond to you when you tell them no regarding any number of matters where they want something from you and you simply choose not to comply. Lets take the classic scenario of being robbed. I'm minding my own business yeah? Having a stroll down a sketchy alley. I'm also a law abiding concealed carry owner as is required by the city. This guy jumps out from behind a dumpster, waving a pistol in my face, stress levels on both sides rise. I pull my gun and wave it in his face causing his stress levels to rise as quickly as mine is from his weapon. Then what? We're both just standing there pointing our weapons at each other? Yelling and biding time until one or the others stress level is high enough to cause instant death from a bullet to the face? Am I getting this right? What if a cat is just running his mouth, going on about what ever this troll wants to annoy people with for the day. After a bit of arguing trying to get this guy to shut up my mates had enough. He goes out and grabs the Louisville Slugger from the boot and proceeds to hit this dude over the head knocking his character out and effectively shutting up the troll. But what? My mates gotta threaten the guy? Wave the bat around a bit in his face until stress peaks enough to get in a silencing blow? Talk about breaking immersion from a situation. You guys aren't going the perma-death route so there's no need to nurf damage to players from weapons. Weapons should be threatening, weapons are threatening! What ever the platform may be. A gangster has a switch blade and a target to get rid of, he walks up behind him to stab him a handful of times but what? The target didn't see it coming so he receives little to no damage blowing all attempts at a clean get away never mind the success of taking down his target because now he has to chase him down the street until the targets stress level peaks so he can deliver the final blow or just hope that the target bleeds out? Hell, by now the gangsters description is passed on to who knows how many cops are in the area. Forget about it, there goes your role playing. I'll take it ONE MASSIVE step further. You're a hit man, you're on top of a roof, you're rifle scope is trained on your targets FACE while he has a chat out side of a bistro.... But remember, no matter how good of a shot, or a hit man you are... that's not a one shot kill because the handicap applied stress level was to low for the target. Better hope your second shot is equally good, it better be because now you're dealing with a moving target... Come on Dev's. Allow for cops to actually have to do their jobs. Having weapons being so damaging is going to force public safety making it so that cops ACTUALLY HAVE TO BE PROACTIVE in keeping random violence encounters to a minimum. But yes you are correct, there may not be enough police on the server at any given time to stop all acts of robbery, gang violence, fist fights, drug deals etc. And that's a good thing! It's a good thing because if you do get the cops involved in a situation, you're screwed, especially if other people get a description of you. Then guess what, an investigation is opened, then guess what? Your character is hunted. Making sure police players ACTIVELY have to police is going to make criminals think twice about causing random violence. Add the already peer judging/court sentencing/ jail system in the mix and you already have a system that is proven to deter crime. But not always, and that's ok. So to wrap it up here, and I know what some might be thinking, just join a server where the handicapping stress system is turned off, but the best RP cop players may not be in those servers and in turn, are just places where crime is rampant and any cop in it for a good game play experience isn't going to go in there. Since it is so early on, I am asking that the Dev's at least consider an alternative. Instead of the stress system dictating how much damage is received, make it so that the stress is a layer of interactivity between the character and the player. Making it so that the player is now having to fight with his or her character to keep them in that gun fight or brawl. Or while running away from an attacker, having to actively fight to pick their character up from the ground when they trip from their characters stress and nerves going through the roof. Characters hands shake from the spiked adrenaline in a gun fight if not used to conflict like that etc. I'm spit balling here that's a pretty mundane example but then what we're really talking about here is completely re-mapping how the character reacts to physical interaction with objects, people and the environment. Meaning lets say, my mate missed that trolls head with that base ball bat and ends up knocking him to the ground. That troll then is trying to either fight back from the ground or he's trying to crawl, roll, w.e to get up and away from that bat. My mate then just decides to knee cap the guy over and over until his knee shatters. That characters knee become useless, thus he's not running anywhere, especially from his attacker. This now opens an entirely new scenario because now that troll has to pay for hospital bills, or he sues my mate in court and now my mate regrets trying to shut this troll up because there goes his money that he was saving to open a store. Again the re-thinking of random violence occurs. Never mind the fact of having to explain that to a jury! "Well you see ladies and gentleman of the jury, he was being a troll and wouldn't shut up...so I tried to knock him out to shut the audio connection off between his mic and the character but when that failed I decided to settle on breaking his knee cap to damage his wallet through medical bills...to teach him a lesson that way...please don't send me to jail I'd like to play today and not have to AFK my jail time...." But anyway, then were talking about the entire redesign of a targeting system and even adding bone structures into the player models. Not something that's priority right now I'm sure. In my opinion, I think it sounds good in theory but when put to practical use would be more frustrating and immersion breaking than is realized. Anyway guys hopefully this will be met with interest and spark some lines of though. Let me know.

Yeee I know you're fed up, like most are man. Unfortunately when choosing to participate in a developing community like this you're subjecting yourself to let downs and frustration. Which is just apart of the process, just like the teams lack of transparency with internal issues of their own. I've been here since the very very early days and yeah, it's taking forever for the leads to get their shit ironed out but they are making progress. I know its hard to argue or justify that when date after date keeps getting announced and missed, but progress, no matter how slow, is still progress. Hang in there man, we have a long road ahead.

Did I come off as confused as to my understanding as to why it exists?

What guns would i like to see hmm? Id like to see guns that arnt controlled by a (lol) stress system to curb random death. Thank god you can turn that crap off in private servers.

I second the supply and demand aspect of drug use. Though I'm sure all of which will play out in the long term economic fabrics. IRL drug use is a metal experience. On some occasions they buff, like the incident in Florida some years ago where a guy on bath salts (not your bath and body works brand) jumped off of a balcony and proceeded to eat the face off of a guy then received how ever many rounds its was from police before they dropped him. Did the salts turn him into a zombie? Did they give him super abilities? Nah, they just altered his chemistry in such a high dose to become unresponsive to pain and rational thinking. In my opinion, it would be a waste to only implement visuals or super buffs. When I'm high I gotta fight my own urges to eat the entire container of ice cream pahaha. My point is, allow the drug use to create a new layer of interactivity between the player and the character. If they're drunk, having to fight keeping up right, letting em lean against the wall until they get their shit together, hell.. even give us an option to make em throw up. Etc etc.

Not just the developers, but the handful of people in the community that feel the need to put people down constantly because of posts expressing concern or accountability on a dead line the devs set and fail to meet time after time.

So the Devs shouldn't shouldn't listen to anyone that quotes them because in your opinion anyone that attempts accountability is wrong and should be shamed. Your go to weapon, you do it every time. Also its got nothing to do with rushing the devs, people post topics like this because of the repeated patterns of unrealistic goals and announcements. Anyone that has been following this since 14 would be hard pressed to say that there isn't an issue.

^ Im encompassing everything and LuckyDuck wheres your proof? Cause you always seem to have this some sort of insider knowledge and we're just supposed to take your word for it? Regardless, they now have an office for expansion, they now have 800k invested in their idea. An investment most of us here made. Surely there will be progress yes? And I don't mean silly little streams showing us character design and some building shading for a module the equivalent of PS Home. That's all that's owed to the community is that game play video to show off that your game is actually functioning and following that, the module. That's where we are at currently no more no less and we've been fed less the entirety of our history together. So much so that hatefulness is becoming apart of this community. It's big news: the official Town Square release date will be announced in the month of October. "Announced." Understand that nothing has changed from the end of last year to the end this year -when the module was first announced- besides a partnership, team expansions and funding. Surely there will be something to show.

I lold. ok so The apartment video isn't a game play video.. and its certainly not the game play video the team keeps promising. Argue with me all you want guys the facts still stand. And yeah, I'm sure they're about to release the module any day now, lets hope. I only see you new cats rushing to argue with me like the team needs you to defend their honor or something. There is a major gap in accountability with this team that has been apparent since day one and I'm going to continue to report on it. Dislike me as much as you'd but I am a counter balance here, like the rest of you and I feel a responsibility simply because I don't see anyone else keeping the pressure on this team to follow through with their word especially $800k later. This is a Role-playing community isn't it??

I only report on fact my man, and the facts are empty promises with nothing to show and spending your money. *shrugs*

So idk how you can compare the two dude but your points make me lol

Alright Kyle here's the thing, show me where we've been wrong so far, cause SO FAR, this team has nothing to show except $800k of your your money and a flash new office... Aye? What you claim to see them doing is "developing" What I see them doing is spending money. "Well its on a new team and the space to house them." Except you've already claimed to have expanded and sure you can be expanding more but then I have to ask what are all of these new employees working on? Cause we haven't seen anything. Any logical management team would look at the track record and say "Jeez guys you know what? We haven't delivered on a single promise in over 2 years.." "MAYBE we shouldn't post hype about our new plush office and get previously promised content out.." But yeah sure, they're working on it, no matter what side of the fence you're on you guys know this is bunk, you just really hope it isn't so. You gotta look at the facts and the facts are: Still no content, big new office. And Johnny's point of view there was so immaturely presented I don't know how to react. And knock it off with the small team excuse cause the guys over at Black Matter have a shockingly small team who still put out proof that their back end and front is operational and working. Never Mind Battle State Games who are roughly 30 plus now who put out a full Alpha build with as little as 15 guys then in the same year pushed an updated engine and forwarded the game into beta. So nice try.

White knight, it has nothing to do with the size of project more so than the empty promises laid out before your attempt of summary. And its funny to claim that "oh this is a big project, and bleh" Really? cause there is absolutely zero evidence that this is a big project other than IDEA and THEORY. That's it guys, ZERO proof, understand that, ZERO proof. So we have what, some live streams showing us art and model design, level design etc. With zero effort to make up from past claims that fall through in which the team has now raised more money to afford a plush office in which case THEY STILL CANT SEEM TO DELIVER ON PROMISES, even after the lead dev openly states to having terrible PR and inability to fulfill promises. Drop all comparisons to AAA companies like Rockstar and understand that $800,000 -and even before that- is more than enough to deliver on promises from before, like oh lets say a module or a game play video. I get that you new crew white knights of the land are tired of hearing us old fags complain, but at this point it has nothing to do with delay more than it does of integrity, and this team, albeit strong in its spirit and idea lacks integrity, period. How ever you try to argue it or spin it, the truth is in the photos. And as the photos show us, they have a new office to play in, thanks to your money. But you down there, you wanna mention fans? Go look at Star Citizen and their department, go look at Escape From Tarkov and their department, oh and even the very very small team of Hell Let Loose. Guess what, all delivering on schedule and all full filling promises. Don't be so blind by bias, but reason by fact. The fact is in the proof, and the only proof you have as a community is a new office..

How would we know anything?

Nah its not a joke man.What they're working on here is big, so delays are understandable. Support is certainly needed. What gets me now is the acknowledgment of terrible PR and apologies for deadlines falling through but then... nothing? Not even an attempt to remedy that? The project here is worked on day in and day out. They know how long something is going to take. So for someone representing the whole of everything to say "Its been busy, we know content is what we said but, we're sorry. So yeah, we're going to make up for it with content." then go silent again not once, twice or even three times is just shocking. It's a shocking thing. Just my opinion, doesn't mean I'm right. That's just a lot of money and a lot of content.

lol trust me bruv this game is no where even close to an XOX release date. They cant even meet the dead lines that they set on simple game play videos, never mind a console release.

BS once again you claim a video is on the way. Nice try.

So this is why the devs cant seem to get anything done, this is all starting to make sense now.

I lold ^^ Speech craft level up, give em hell Dent.

Well if this gives you any idea I've already been silenced for pushing for hard fact and answers as to why the devs are unreachable. So to answer your question sure there will be freedom of speech, until you make the kings upset, then you'll be censored.

My dude, don't you worry your little heart, I'm informed but when was the last time you were? If you've followed as close as you preach, then you'd have seen me around. Which would imply I'm well informed on such a trivial subject. Which would further imply that you were able to pick up on OPs need for speculation due to lack of hard detail that we actually don't know because Devs don't hold their word. So Bruv the next time you feel the need to educate me on something you think you know, don't because no one here actually knows the game machanics and how something will work. I do appreciate your white knight skills doe, keep your chin up and keep everyone in line, Gotham needs you Harvey.

Like that garbage communication

Thanks to Lucky the rest of community is able to read the dev blog. Up until now the dev blogs have been posted to the site but now only pledger or kick starter get sent the dev blogs aye? And everybody is ok with that? You're all cool with that?

No body can answer that because the Dev's refuse to communicate with the community.

Today I will express my true concern, you've got Leslie Benzies over here in an attempt to make what you're creating Devs. Will it be exactly to the T on your design and ideas? Maybe, but I doubt it. What makes me nervous, although still a ways off, is Identity being brushed under the rug by Benzies on part from lack of details being presented and the community growing tired of waiting. I don't want to see this fail because of someone who has a full team, marketing and backing. We are talking about the man who drove rockstar games through its pinnacle after all... Communication is a commitment. For the record I'm not promoting Dev hate speech.