As much as I do miss the olden days of nobody caring, its fair to say a big part of that is because people were pretty much shamed or shunned into silence. The big boys of that era ran riot over everyone else and used everything to their advantage, including PK's, and you couldn't really challenge them over it because they had the majority on their side.
It was a popularity contest, really. If you were liked, or had the right friends, you could do almost anything on server to anyone and, if you were smart, it'd stick. Hell, the whole reason most of it happened was because people were attached to their characters and did anything to keep themselves alive.
While I totally agree that people got less and less able to handle just making their own roleplay, I think the rest is a bit more difficult to unpack.
Talking more in the relationship between Combine and Rebels more than anything - Rebel roleplay internal shit didn't change just because some balance was created, surely more PK scrutiny was put in place by people like Mic and myself, especially when Helix came around, but this popularity stuff remained - if anything it became an even bigger OOC thing, you really could not speak against specific players because they had a large following and you'd get harassed and shat on for it. Eventually, that stuff was gone, but in my opinion by the time it was gone it was because headstaff refused to accept that false status quo any longer and they didn't like it and it was already too late for the gamemode itself - Lots of bad blood existed, old grudges, people lost the focus on the game and made it into some forum politics bullshit, and that eventually ruined it all even for the newest players.
honestly its probably fair to say combine have been the better behaved of the two sides as a whole, just because anyone who wanted to play under an actual faction leadership tended to be the kind of player who wanted to "act out" less
but then the ((((((chosen few))))) who treated it like an oppression crusade would ruin it for everyone else by confirming the rebels' worst suspicions about the faction & passing down bad examples to new members
imo the early days would've pulled players in no matter what because that's what honeymoon periods look like. its only when that wears off that the actual flaws of the setting become debilitating
beyond a certain point though the biases set in for sure and even when you "improved" cityRP people would hold onto the few bad experiences they had with it from two years ago or so
its basically why we eventually had to move to outlands CvR
Yeah but I'd describe very early Neb/late LP as honeymoon, the rest we'd be one of the most (and few) populated servers in not just HL2RP but Gmod itself and we still maintained some of the old ways. Sure, it was oppressive, headcops were ruthless with anything that moved away from being a model cop and citizens only had workshifts to do - But they looked for shit to do, people opened stores, replenished from the CWU, had their chats on those bars and went for walks and for a chat, apartments were used for more than just ERP and there was city life. Rebel RP existed, but it was boiling and living as a rebel was a constant danger not just from the Combine but the resistance itself being so fragmented -
@Rabid made the point of some figures being too powerful but at the same time those figures existing gave Rebel RP a semblance of an undefeated leadership, and dragged players into risking their lives for them. Sure, toxicity and stuff existed, but it didn't affect the majority of the playerbase and issues were handled and solved without them becoming a community-wide argument of Combine vs Rebels or dividing the community resistance playerbase in two.
I remember going out, meeting people, chatting with them in bars and shit, Grizzly being full, but not just Grizzly, the other bars also had stuff to do - hell, City 8 was ENJOYABLE and I know it sounds crazy but it was enjoyable and bearable, both as a rebel and as a citizen. It had issues but we pulled through.
This is all from before Helix though, and before Helix was close from coming around - The decline started somewhere at the final moments of Clockwork, not in Helix, if anything the fresh start helped somewhat but of course wasn't going to solve the deeply rooted shit that eventually came back around.
honestly its probably fair to say combine have been the better behaved of the two sides as a whole, just because anyone who wanted to play under an actual faction leadership tended to be the kind of player who wanted to "act out" less
I think the moment I saw shit go the most wrong in this sense was when I witnessed shit like when in Red Letter Day someone shotcopped some random cop while the event of the whole world being consumed by a giant dyson sphere was going on. It felt the most OOCly driven shit, someone who took advantage of people reading what should've been something akin to a cutscene to paste a shit S2K /me and ruin the event for someone with no need at all nor any real motivation. It felt empty, boring, disgusting and even insulting, like fun didn't matter anymore, it was all faction vs faction shit with no respect for the players on either side.