Serious HL2RP - Moving Forward

[Mute]

my opinion might not matter that much considering i haven't been active in the scene in ages but i might as well give my thoughts

i don't mean it to be discouraging but I don't think that a server that has little to no support from its owners will ever be successful, alex and the dev team have already moved on to other prospects like gtarp and BQ who i think was generally the glue that held everything together in the last long running iteration stepped down years ago at this point (no offence to other following SDs they also did a good job with what they had)

i don't think dev work is the inherent issue, people are drawn in by flashy features but its not the reason they stay

the main driving force for me remaining here and even posting this in the end has been the community and the culture around the server, it feels extremely disconnected to me and at this point i can't even tell the last 4 iterations apart, and even if i wanted to come back and play i wouldn't know where to start or what to do or what's happened cause that culture is inherently lacking, there is nothing inspiring to me here anymore

you can keep reimagining the same formula for the 20th time, wondering if a 24/7 server or a server that opens at specific times is the solution, more events and staff involvement, less events and staff involvement, more focus dev work, more focus on lore, thinking of what would finally be the solution that fixes the server, but the people who host it are ambivalent to what happens and that's its killer

if people are interested in hl2rp, there are better places to be, just go somewhere else and do your ideas, if people are interested in the culture of nebulous, its community and future prospects then thats what makes them stay and interested

if you want hl2rp on neb then power to you, good luck with the iteration, live out your characters and events with the people you know even if its 10, if you want hl2rp in general just go somewhere else

 

[Aether]

theres no way you could have gmod s2k make any amount of sense if people are ICly WoD chararacters lol

I don't necessarily agree tbh, I feel as though it'd make as much sense as HL2RP's S2K

 

[Coldflame]

I don't necessarily agree tbh, I feel as though it'd make as much sense as HL2RP's S2K

many of the powers and innate capabilities of vampires go way beyond what can be reasonably modelled in real time source engine combat tbh, even low levels of celerity are canonically equivalent to full-pelt bhopping, not to mention vampires being functionally immune to most firearms under most circumstances

WoD rp would definitely have to be basically exclusively s2rp or roll based- not actually a bad thing imo but definitely does present the issue of having no appeal to s2kbrains like maxenzie said

 

[Señor Jaggles]

Honestly speaking, I used to love HL2RP and spent hours upon hours in it - Eventually it became not fun anymore, because even though dev work was put and things were being done, you kind of get tired of the same universe but in different location/point in time kind of deal. Retrospectively, I think maybe there could be things we could have done that might have made Neb's HL2RP live longer, but certainly nothing too crazy, to believe if we had taken every suggestion and implemented it ("especially the ones I suggested because they were so good!" you can hear ringing in some people's minds) the server would've lasted much more is nothing short of delusional.

The reality is, we will never know, and that's just how it is- Said suggestions could've easily also crashed and pushed away the population we had back then, effectively killing the server in a few weeks or even days, but we will never know that either. We chose a path, server ran its course and now the community wishes for something else, more and more people stopped playing Gmod altogether and others simply felt they had played enough HL2RP. For the few remaining, they went to other communities that also had a playerbase and thrived off these "refugees". Playing Captain Hindsight can only go so far, we can all talk now about what should've been done but in truth it's not just too late to change anything, but we also as already stated will never know if it would've worked at all.

At this point, Gmod players are dwindling, HL2 as a game in itself doesn't have the pull and attraction it used to, and so many of those who in the past pulled the heavy load of servers being created on Gmod either already have an existing project or have simply left the pain that are Lua and Hammer Editor in order to finally enjoy coding and mapping. I don't think there's any amount of John Freeman or Bird RP that can revive HL2RP at this point to its "former glory" as people would call it, as defeatist as it sounds, and we should focus on other platforms where roleplay (if that's what we still like and want) thrives better and also one with an existing playerbase (many will think of GTA5, it does have a hefty playerbase, but there are others out there too).

Don't look at it in the "defeatist" way, but rather in the way anyone who sees a good chapter of a book closing and moves onto the next would.

 

[Frosty]

Did the server already launch? Every time i asked i was either told it hadnt launched and now it looks like the end of it already what the f

 

[Frosty]

Here im reading through the comments on this and im sick of it like. How much do yous all cry rather than just play the server man. Willars is still about and yous just sit here writing paragraphs about burn out and that how about yous just play the game instead of spending fucking hours crying out about weekend servers or about how alex left or about how blackquill left i played for years and it felt like nowt changed, and i was happy with that because i just played city RP and didnt bother with the events and that because it was always scripted nonsense. It feels like half of yous want every revival to fail just so yous can hop back on the forums and make some three paragraph post about how i told you so

 

[Der Mansk]

Honestly speaking, I used to love HL2RP and spent hours upon hours in it - Eventually it became not fun anymore, because even though dev work was put and things were being done, you kind of get tired of the same universe but in different location/point in time kind of deal. Retrospectively, I think maybe there could be things we could have done that might have made Neb's HL2RP live longer, but certainly nothing too crazy, to believe if we had taken every suggestion and implemented it ("especially the ones I suggested because they were so good!" you can hear ringing in some people's minds) the server would've lasted much more is nothing short of delusional.

The reality is, we will never know, and that's just how it is- Said suggestions could've easily also crashed and pushed away the population we had back then, effectively killing the server in a few weeks or even days, but we will never know that either. We chose a path, server ran its course and now the community wishes for something else, more and more people stopped playing Gmod altogether and others simply felt they had played enough HL2RP. For the few remaining, they went to other communities that also had a playerbase and thrived off these "refugees". Playing Captain Hindsight can only go so far, we can all talk now about what should've been done but in truth it's not just too late to change anything, but we also as already stated will never know if it would've worked at all.

At this point, Gmod players are dwindling, HL2 as a game in itself doesn't have the pull and attraction it used to, and so many of those who in the past pulled the heavy load of servers being created on Gmod either already have an existing project or have simply left the pain that are Lua and Hammer Editor in order to finally enjoy coding and mapping. I don't think there's any amount of John Freeman or Bird RP that can revive HL2RP at this point to its "former glory" as people would call it, as defeatist as it sounds, and we should focus on other platforms where roleplay (if that's what we still like and want) thrives better and also one with an existing playerbase (many will think of GTA5, it does have a hefty playerbase, but there are others out there too).

Don't look at it in the "defeatist" way, but rather in the way anyone who sees a good chapter of a book closing and moves onto the next would.

Gmod's playerbase is dying so tremendously and HL2 is such a dead franchise to the point where willard only got a peak of 82 players today, and have only had 300 unique first time players join their server the past month... so sad.

Nebulous HL2RP wasn't provided any development time nor resources from the headstaff, who they themselves have said they wanted to move on from gmod entirely. It isn't a coincidence that the server died when no one running the project had the passion necessary to keep it going.

You speak as though the server had something to lose by implementing popular player suggestions. When the server still had a reasonably substantial playercount, there were constant complaints about the rebel RP, the cop RP, the grind of having to collect 200 metal cans, and many of the suggestions brought forth sought to solve those issues. If any one of those highly popular suggestions was implemented and it failed miserably, at least it would have shown a willingness to fix those issues with the help of the playerbase. I don't see how trying something new and failing is somehow worse than just allowing the server to stagnate into what was an inevitable doom. I guarantee if an event like Joseon was pitched in 2022 it would have been blown off as too ambitious, too much work, no one would like it, etc. despite it being the last great nebulous event to take place. There was simply 0 willingness to try anything new at the end.

 

[Señor Jaggles]

Gmod's playerbase is dying so tremendously and HL2 is such a dead franchise to the point where willard only got a peak of 82 players today, and have only had 300 unique first time players join their server the past month... so sad.

And an average of 20-something which you for some reason skipped, for which they need a pretty big bunch of developers

Unique first time players also barely ever go past the first week if past the first day, you can delude yourself into Gmod being what it was in 2016 or in 2020's pandemic but it just isn't.

You speak as though the server had something to lose by implementing popular player suggestions. When the server still had a reasonably substantial playercount, there were constant complaints about the rebel RP, the cop RP, the grind of having to collect 200 metal cans, and many of the suggestions brought forth sought to solve those issues. If any one of those highly popular suggestions was implemented and it failed miserably, at least it would have shown a willingness to fix those issues with the help of the playerbase. I don't see how trying something new and failing is somehow worse than just allowing the server to stagnate into what was an inevitable doom. I guarantee if an event like Joseon was pitched in 2022 it would have been blown off as too ambitious, too much work, no one would like it, etc. despite it being the last great nebulous event to take place. There was simply 0 willingness to try anything new at the end.

Why can you even guarantee an event like Joseon would've been written off like that? You don't actually think a well structured and planned out event project with a potential team to run it already set up like Dallas did would've been blown off just like that do you?

On the other hand, you talk like Neb had then the active dev team Willard has today, when it certainly didn't. There were suggestions that did not need dev work, but for those who did zombine was one of the major weight pullers and when he was gone it was very noticeable. As for alex and else focusing on other projects, as a dev myself I can't even blame them for pulling away from Gmod (much like zombine and many others did).

Some suggestions passed a filter and some others didn't, saying nothing was ever done isn't exactly fair either. However was relying in the old formula a bigger mistake than trying big gambles in multiple suggestions that sought huge changes? Perhaps, hell, maybe surely, as we've gone down that lane and eventually found ourselves where we are now. Should have we given an explicit reply to each and every suggestion, even if it was to deny them? Yeah, maybe, though considering specific players pitched their ego in those ideas and if you denied them you'd get backlash (like the way some people got their discord friends to bury people who disagreed with them in dumb ratings and going as far as harassing them?) I am not surprised nobody wanted to do that job or many other jobs as a matter of fact, and would rather take the collective punishment of "the staff team didn't reply to suggestions". In fact, that might also be a factor in people's quiet decision to pull away from ever trying anything here in the first place.

My point is you waste your time and energy arguing over it here as if it will change anything when it's a reality that HL2RP here has already run its course, when it will not. It's not about who is right or wrong it's about who moves on from it and who doesn't, thread name is "Moving forward" not "Looking for who and what's to blame for neb hl2rp failure".

 

[fofa]

You don't actually think a well structured and planned out event project with a potential team to run it already set up like Dallas did would've been blown off just like that do you?

correct me on this if i'm wrong but i've heard that dallas was really the only event maker that was given that much freedom in regards to events and if someone else proposed events of a similar scale, also well written but with a different team they would've just been blown off. i remember it being described as a lack of trust towards anyone that isn't dallas

 

[Señor Jaggles]

correct me on this but i've heard that dallas was really the only event maker that was given that much freedom in regards to events and if someone else proposed events of a similar scale, also well written but with a different team they would've been just blown off. i remember it being described as a lack of trust towards anyone that isn't dallas

I am pretty sure other people have organised events of a similar scale so this may have been some people's conception but not entirely true

It may be true to an extent of someone presenting an idea as a project and having no experience at all with event running, which would mostly mean a total defeat, but if someone who had done good smaller scale events in the past pushed a good proposal forward I don't think they'd be blown off

It's not that people were "below Dallas", it's just that Dallas had pulled insanely successful events time and again and thus was on a league of his own, but I did enjoy big events from other event organisers just as much and they saw the light in the same way as Dallas's events did, through proposal and finally approval

 

[Tinbe]

The whole "HL2 is a dead setting" argument feels kind of odd given that we had HL2RP2 iteration with all of its ups and downs going from start of 2023 till the beginning of this year. The setting is only as dead as the format it's presented in. If you have a novel way for people to enjoy the world of Half-Life and you can commit to it, then you've got a shot. On top of that, it's as much about keeping players interested as it is about keeping the staff interested. Though, I can only say for certain what interests me as a player, since figuring out staff interest isn't within my purview - especially since that appears more of an endemic issue that's persisted long before Early Days and HL2RP2 came about.

Edit: Though, again, there's much to learn from HL2RP2 instead of just repeating it. Lots of issues that happened during its duration, but the fact it managed to last a year in spite of that speaks volumes, I think.

 

[Señor Jaggles]

The whole "HL2 is a dead setting" argument feels kind of odd given that we had HL2RP2 iteration with all of its ups and downs going from start of 2023 till the beginning of this year. The setting is only as dead as the format it's presented in. If you have a novel way for people to enjoy the world of Half-Life and you can commit to it, then you've got a shot. On top of that, it's as much about keeping players interested as it is about keeping the staff interested. Though, I can only say for certain what interests me as a player, since figuring out staff interest isn't within my purview - especially since that appears more of an endemic issue that's persisted long before Early Days and HL2RP2 came about.

Edit: Though, again, there's much to learn from HL2RP2 instead of just repeating it. Lots of issues that happened during its duration, but the fact it managed to last a year in spite of that speaks volumes, I think.

I'm sorry Tinbe but the reason HL2RP² thrived was precisely because it had

1. Nothing to truly do with the original setting, not even with outlands in ep2

2. A way less serious, more lax mentality presented with a lot of combat and action involved, more freedom and a reduction on dependence on passive roleplay

People logged in for the shooting, flagged off afterwards, and so on. Sure, some stayed, but it wasn't a 50/50 sort of thing, outside of events and some specific players' plotlines of course.

 

[Tinbe]

1. Nothing to truly do with the original setting, not even with outlands in ep2

I don't see how this can be so, given a wealth of elements from Half-Life series were spent during the iteration - from common to obscure to cut content. We had gonarchs, gargantuas, kingpins, chumtoads, Race X, Lambda, soldier synths, alien controllers, advisors, and so much more - and much of that played directly into the story.

2. A way less serious, more lax mentality presented with a lot of combat and action involved, more freedom and a reduction on dependence on passive roleplay

The PvP aspect of the iteration was my personal bane, it was rarely fun and - from what I saw - seemed to mostly spurn OOC hostilities no matter whether those many matches of weird inverse counter-strike dictated story beats or not. It was the roleplay for me, not s2k.

People logged in for the shooting, flagged off afterwards, and so on. Sure, some stayed, but it wasn't a 50/50 sort of thing, outside of events and some specific players' plotlines of course.

If I ever flagged off after s2k, it was because the whole shootout was just so exhausting that it took all the wind out of my sails. I only ever participated out of obligation because vortigaunts have a lot of utility in gunfights, but outside of some scant few times where I wasn't instamelted by full-auto vomit of bullets, it was a very mixed bag experience.

Saying it thrived because of PvP, unseriousness and S2K feels like such a disservice to all the roleplay carried out by all the characters I personally witnessed, interacted with or even simply heard about. I'm going to remember HL2RP2 fondly for years to come because of them, not because I turned a corner and a BRRRT of MP7 fire sent me to the "You will be respawning shortly" screen.

 

[Señor Jaggles]

I don't see how this can be so, given a wealth of elements from Half-Life series were spent during the iteration - from common to obscure to cut content. We had gonarchs, gargantuas, kingpins, chumtoads, Race X, Lambda, soldier synths, alien controllers, advisors, and so much more - and much of that played directly into the story.

Putting Gordon Freeman into Call of Duty doesn't make it Half Life 2 does it

If I ever flagged off after s2k, it was because the whole shootout was just so exhausting that it took all the wind out of my sails. I only ever participated out of obligation because vortigaunts have a lot of utility in gunfights, but outside of some scant few times where I wasn't instamelted by full-auto vomit of bullets, it was a very mixed bag experience.

Saying it thrived because of PvP, unseriousness and S2K feels like such a disservice to all the roleplay carried out by all the characters I personally witnessed, interacted with or even simply heard about. I'm going to remember HL2RP2 fondly for years to come because of them, not because I turned a corner and a BRRRT of MP7 fire sent me to the "You will be respawning shortly" screen.

I'm not saying it was a bad thing, or that it wasn't cool, or that RP didn't exist, but if we had made some slow-paced passive roleplay iteration with little to no combat involved, no fast-paced stuff and nothing of that, do you seriously think it would've gone anywhere? Sorry to say, but no it wouldn't.

I will too remember it fondly, I liked it a lot, and had a lot of RP with cool people, as well as enjoyable moments and combat situations, it was a big mix of it all. The only thing I won't remember it for is something it simply was not, nor I will delude myself into believing it was anything similar to what other servers had four years ago.

 

[PilotBland]

i think hl2rp is awesome and u should give it another chance i would love 2 rp ag ain

 

[Aether]

many of the powers and innate capabilities of vampires go way beyond what can be reasonably modelled in real time source engine combat tbh, even low levels of celerity are canonically equivalent to full-pelt bhopping, not to mention vampires being functionally immune to most firearms under most circumstances

WoD rp would definitely have to be basically exclusively s2rp or roll based- not actually a bad thing imo but definitely does present the issue of having no appeal to s2kbrains like maxenzie said

Much like HL2RP, tailoring canon to fit the medium is just a given.

In HL2's canon, Vortigaunts would practically curb-stomp most counters given prep time, Antlions would be a ridiculously big threat, OTA would win practically every gunfight as the bullets from AR2's or god forbid the dark matter balls would shred just about anything, not to mention the synths. Tailoring the canon from WoD to fit would not be overly difficult, just balancing or even just adapting VTM:B would probably be fine.

I agree that rolls would be a more common thing, but I don't necessarily think S2K would be impossible.

 

[Señor Jaggles]

Much like HL2RP, tailoring canon to fit the medium is just a given.

In HL2's canon, Vortigaunts would practically curb-stomp most counters given prep time, Antlions would be a ridiculously big threat, OTA would win practically every gunfight as the bullets from AR2's or god forbid the dark matter balls would shred just about anything, not to mention the synths. Tailoring the canon from WoD to fit would not be overly difficult, just balancing or even just adapting VTM:B would probably be fine.

I agree that rolls would be a more common thing, but I don't necessarily think S2K would be impossible.

Sorry is this implying a Gmod gamemode or does VTM:B have a multiplayer?

 

[MaXenzie]

VTM:B have a multiplayer?

well there's vampire the masquerade blood hunt which is a abttle royale

 

[Señor Jaggles]

well there's vampire the masquerade blood hunt which is a abttle royale

Now we're talking business

 

[I'M #1 SO WHY TRY HARDER]

i think hl2rp is awesome and u should give it another chance i would love 2 rp ag ain