What's Next? - HL2RP: Early Days

[Generally Fruity]

Spoiler: Excess of possibly offtopic ramblinc

I don't really get the arguments about lack of time, people were pretty eager to play current iteration for as long as they did. And people were playing at some frankly stupid times, weekends were prone to graveyard days because raisins meanwhile people would happily play during midnight hours on weekdays.

And I tried my best to keep playing even as playercount began dropping, because the few staff still present crafted situations that I could solve through creative roleplay. Having applied for a tinkerer character near the end of last year, it enabled me to come up with random things to do, even if there weren't many people around.

Even so, at some point it just began feeling... hollow. I have all the respect for the staff that remained, their plotlines involving the void and the leviathan and more were genuinely fascinating. But the combination of loneliness (because barely anybody else was there to roleplay alongside) and performance anxiety (because barely anybody else was there to roleplay alongside) meant I eventually stopped playing. Now I simply wait for the finale, whether it be a sendoff event or just a forum post.

Far be it for me to accurately guess why all this happened, I've never been privy to how staff's been doing regardless of the iteration in question. I merely hope that when HL2RP² shuts down, it will have a dignified end.

I have no greater musings about this upcoming iteration for now. HL2RP² is, to me personally, so much a culmination of a decade-long journey with HL2RP - finally getting from CityRP to earnestly RPing the post-occupation era - that I genuinely struggle picturing the early occupation era as a roleplay setting.

reason: the auteur framework works for television, not the 24/7 DnD session that is gmod roleplay

 

[Andrew]

Spoiler: Excess of possibly offtopic ramblinc

I don't really get the arguments about lack of time, people were pretty eager to play current iteration for as long as they did. And people were playing at some frankly stupid times, weekends were prone to graveyard days because raisins meanwhile people would happily play during midnight hours on weekdays.

And I tried my best to keep playing even as playercount began dropping, because the few staff still present crafted situations that I could solve through creative roleplay. Having applied for a tinkerer character near the end of last year, it enabled me to come up with random things to do, even if there weren't many people around.

Even so, at some point it just began feeling... hollow. I have all the respect for the staff that remained, their plotlines involving the void and the leviathan and more were genuinely fascinating. But the combination of loneliness (because barely anybody else was there to roleplay alongside) and performance anxiety (because barely anybody else was there to roleplay alongside) meant I eventually stopped playing. Now I simply wait for the finale, whether it be a sendoff event or just a forum post.

Far be it for me to accurately guess why all this happened, I've never been privy to how staff's been doing regardless of the iteration in question. I merely hope that when HL2RP² shuts down, it will have a dignified end.

I have no greater musings about this upcoming iteration for now. HL2RP² is, to me personally, so much a culmination of a decade-long journey with HL2RP - finally getting from CityRP to earnestly RPing the post-occupation era - that I genuinely struggle picturing the early occupation era as a roleplay setting.

tinbe it's water under the bridge now but a concise answer is that lack of coordination brought the iteration to where it is

it lasted a year through people joining, rejoining, leaving, coming back, and now we're back to people rejoining for a new iteration.

hl2rp2 had no oversight. headstaff wanted nothing to do with it, taking a mostly hands-off approach. Numbers had school and nobody else was appointed to SD for oversight. people started getting rowdy and roused up issues that other people reacted to negatively, and it could've been avoided with oversight.
six months of disagreements and people leaving/coming back is what got us here, positions changing, people moving around, losing interest and coming back. people trying to wail and ree against the tide to stay afloat, or find the motivation to continue.
combine getting fucked over in decisions. rebels getting fucked over in decisions. both sides fucking each other in decisions. i fuck you. you fuck me. feeling mutual, etc. etc.

i look forward to an iteration with two dads with chagrin after seeing the past six months of hot mess that landed on my lap. i put time and effort into this bullshit and disagreed with and blindly fought people solely based on the words of others that i soon learned couldn't be trusted. people were at each other's throats over the darndest things in our erotic kissing simulator. people just couldn't agree at times, both for the dumbest of reasons and for the best of reasons.


i invite you to look at city 14 if you want something to go on with all of this. no oversight meant we could do whatever the hell we wanted with our ~20 player playerbase. we had our fun, but we made the same mistakes the iteration had made - civipro got shafted in the thinking/narrative department. OTA got shafted because it was cityrp. we had to make decisions that went against what the server stood for at times, undercutting a lot of stuff at times to keep things moving forward or give players a chance, or a third.

was it fun for us? it was at times. it was freedom to do what we wanted, all together. but we had no oversight. nobody other than ourselves who would say 'that sounds like a bad idea, you should do x and y' and because we didn't have someone with a fatter cock and a bigger forum banner than ours, people got restless and kept making questionable decisions. economy? fucked in a week. progression on the server? went pretty good, but we still had outliers who just wanted a gun and a suit to fuck off into the sewer. normalcy to the way combine factions are treated? we had an eow make like a 20 foot jump

a new iteration lets everyone start off on the right foot instead of superceding the position of someone who abandoned the project. no more having to roll with decisions others made or be the guy that puts a sock in them. everyone gets a fresh start and doesn't have to deal with the lead-up to where they got.

and now we wrap back to where we are, with people coming together to make ideas for a new iteration

 

[Maytree]

We're cooking rn, trust us

your hq is looking amazing, ricsow

 

[john]

I don't really get the arguments about lack of time

since i made this argument at least once i'll respond
more a lack of attention span for time investment than lack of time when i could be doing other things. fast-paced immediate involvement that's curated suits my current play-style better. gmod is too much of a grind (for me) to justify booting up and playing a long-term city experience where i'll lag behind everyone else

 

[Andrew]

you have no idea how good shoving everything into a shorter playtime window can improve overall roleplay and enjoyment

 

[Aspect™]

your hq is looking amazing, ricsow

How many times will you post this cursed image

 

[Maytree]

How many times will you post this cursed image

tainting the childhood of many roleplayers is my kink. it's my passion, ever unyielding.

 

[Roman Loaded]

i’m looking forward to playing the asian male protagonist with the fatal flaw of greed, he might have been a spy or soldier but their backstory will be so mysterious and secretive that you’ll never really know, he might even be a transhuman because he’s that mysterious you don’t even know

 

[alex]

Some of the (now deleted) posts here are pretty toxic, I don't really understand why some people feel a need to come back to our forum just to make their jabs. I understand those of you will do this for practically anything we do but Ron, Nathan and the rest of the staff team don't deserve this toxicity; they've done nothing wrong.

It's fine if you don't like their idea but I think you'd be pretty pissed off if our staff went to your community and shit on everything, I'd be annoyed if I found out any of our staff did that too.

 

[Lewis!]

i have an idea for a rebel group

the legbands

evil armbands be like

"we engage in roleplay"

 

[Luft]

Some of the (now deleted) posts here are pretty toxic, I don't really understand why some people feel a need to come back to our forum just to make their jabs. I understand those of you will do this for practically anything we do but Ron, Nathan and the rest of the staff team don't deserve this toxicity; they've done nothing wrong.

It's fine if you don't like their idea but I think you'd be pretty pissed off if our staff went to your community and shit on everything, I'd be annoyed if I found out any of our staff did that too.

nooo you cant like it when i hate it nooo

you have to share my views, you must follow my beliefs

 

[Rabid]

This time last year people swore up and down that V3 would never work, that it was a pointless endeavor and efforts would be better spent on shortform content because the playerbase just wasn't there and the server would die in two weeks flat.

Its worth pointing out that, putting aside Alex saying it couldn't happen after the fact, nobody that has pitched a shortform server since before Linntrix's iteration. Everyone wants to play it, nobody wants to do it.

 

[Lewis!]

I don't think this is arbitrarily going to fail, anybody who was on that hate boner train for the Numbers iteration was retarded and it's the same with this.

But this iteration will suffer from the exact same problems as the last one and inevitably fail just like the last one. That's not necessarily a bad thing, your server is going to come to an end eventually, but it's like, when will you learn Nebulous?

The funniest thing about all this to me is just who in charge this time. I can't get over the irony of the clockwork blacksuit gang who logged on and logged off specifically to shotcop (shotguard) or to engage in one of the brainless shootouts on the valley map are now running a roleplay server.

Not only does your headcop @Simman102 have like a half-a-decade-long reputation of being PK obsessed and consistently anti-rp, focussing on n arbitrary S2K victory over the factions quality, even as an RL, but on top of that @ovxy known for his discord VC temper tantrums when the head clicking didn't go his way, as well as general incompetence as a faction lead which got him removed from both that position as well as staff is now at the head of your OTA transplant (lol)

Like I said, I don't think this is going to arbitrarily fall apart, you've just set yourselves up for failure is all, at least as an RP server. Will probably work out fine as HL2 Deathmatch though.

The only other way I could see it working as an RP server would be if this is some sort of Combine only situation with the rebels as Admin characters because the usual suspects over here will prioritise deathmatch victory over everything else as they've always done. This will create the exact same player base friction as it did the last umpteenth times and the server will close on sour tastes as it did the last umpteenth times.

I wasn't joking when I said just make it semi-serious HL2 Deathmatch. You might be able to reach an equilibrium with the same non-rpers who favour the rebel team and have the S2K server of your dreams.

 

[MaXenzie]

i still think with the average age of players we should be pivoting to cooperative roleplay where most villains are played by staff with 0 OOC intention of winning

 

[Simman102]

as well as general incompetence as a faction lead which got him removed from both that position as well as staff

The hate going @ovxy's way comes from his inability to perform damage control/maintain an image.
I'm familiar with his record and his actions weren't necessarily worse than any other staff member's at the time, it's just the way they're perceived. Claims of incompetence are unfounded.

 

[Frosty]

I preferred when CPs were robocops, whenever a CP tried to act human they just came off awkward and autistic

/me sighs and looks sad as he beats the man to 10hp for being caught running

 

[Rabid]

The hate going @ovxy's way comes from his inability to perform damage control/maintain an image.

I think thats true of a lot of people tbh - including you, no offence.

The amount of times people on Neb could have fixed percieved slights or dug themselves out of a hole with a simple apology and a small adjustment but decided to dig their heels in and spray metaphorical shit everywhere is unreal.

 

[Rabid]

The frank problem is the most capable of people who know how to actually run things like factions or groups are also the ones who often have the poorest of reputations because they don't know how to do (or didn't care to do) damage control.

I mean you said it yourself @Lewis! the current SD's have a reputation of being rebel-alligned shotcoppers. What's the chances they'd willingly pick a known 'cop main' or two if there wasn't a good reason for it?

 

[Hunk]

You dont need to take criticism personally. They are just other people's opinions after all.

But I just cant see this being different from before.

It has been more then 10 years. Its normal that people (or some people) are tired or getting tired especially when there was a lot of drama in the past and nothing indicates its gonna chsnge in the future.

This aint about hate or people "from other communities" like Alex said.

If "other communities" have anything to do with this, they only show that some people are really looking for a different experience. Because everyone here hás been playing neb for ages

 

[MaXenzie]

The frank problem is the most capable of people who know how to actually run things like factions or groups are also the ones who often have the poorest of reputations because they don't know how to do (or didn't care to do) damage control.

I mean you said it yourself @Lewis! the current SD's have a reputation of being rebel-alligned shotcoppers. What's the chances they'd willingly pick a known 'cop main' or two if there wasn't a good reason for it?

i just wish for once factions were put in the hands of people who had no prior experience

nebulous roleplay management has for years felt like every faction is being led by like the same 3 people because "only the people with experience are eligble to run it"

just let the faction be incompetent for like, a month, alongside every other faction, while the new leads learn the ropes of management

i'd rather an earnest newbie run a faction than someone who's already ran it seven times before and will just keep trying to pivot the faction to their own personal idealized state (that's usually very controversial among most other players)