New Beginnings

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I’m ngl putting aside obvious issues with a previous post by bekah tryna pull a classic maneuver:

Really it’s a case of I’m more saddened to know this whole thing is overshadowing what should be an exciting chapter for NIP to properly conclude from the players rather than getting shut down by staff for the upteenth time. Hl2’s why I joined, why I stayed, and why I even bother to remain here. Even with recent drama and everything I’m just incredibly passionate for the setting.

Genuinely have no issue with the people picked, and really I like a lot of them. (Sky and Cindy I love you both, might not show it but y’all are cool :) ) It’s just a lot of this announcement felt like a step back in terms of all this talk on communicating and whatnot with the community. Name change? Imma keep it real I couldn’t care less if we called it “THE LIBERAL SHACK” or something dumb. It’s just a lot to unpack on top of knowing there’s a finality to the stuff I’ve helped work on and had to fight to work on since 2022.

Hoping Phl2 does NIP the justice it deserved after over a full year of people just taking it out to destroy it and the work people put into it. Decepti’s cooked and I hope to see people have fun.

Hoping this doesn’t lead to dark horizons but as I said prior I’ll remain cautiously optimistic.
 
I remain "Skeptically optimistic".

Unlike many in this thread, I'll own the toxicity I generate at times end up spewing due to my mental health. I'f I'm not a part of the future, that's fine nuf I probably aint earned too much of that.

But I'm being real, if all you have are positive memories, unless you're some kind of saint, you're probably the same kind of person who drove people away in the past. I did it a lot, in City 17, and periodically since. Regret it but it don't change what happened.

But the "I want to say these words" crowed is just, weird.

Weird in a way that as I am not only told by the people who have been trying to run shit off and on the past while have trouble getting help to code things. Weird in a way that keeps attracting people like Pershing (who has a post on his steam page from THE kill that seems to be a congrats for his work here). Weird in a way that keeps making queer people and other minorities feel less safe especially in a modern context of political persecution thats now ongoing in at least, some major regions.

Frankly, if I'm toxic? Yall are fucking radioactive waste for this community and its no wonder they want to cast off the toxicity of old. TaconBanana does not deserve to exist, not as TnB. I'm fine with a name change. Yes it may come out what the old community was, but hopefully, the problem adults (most of them aint children near as I can tell most of you lot have been here as long as me or longer), are never seen again.

DarkRP? I wont play during that, but when yall cycle round to serious roleplay once more hopefully with a more energized and healthy playerbase, I'll be back.
 
ok maybe nat attack is onto something maybe we can do TRP for the 500th time like bro bring back stalker rp or stfu and settle on darkrp
I just dont understand why its always hl2rp or trp? We had success with shit like Halo and it was new and fresh beacuse it wasnt re-done the same thing over and over and over by the same brain dead fucking retards who think hl2rp is tnb's bread and butter and are too afraid beacuse of stupid shit like "Racism" to try out of the box settings.

- I suggested years ago we try a half life setting somewhere in Africa or something and was shot down immediately by an idiot (You know who you are) because "We can't trust the community not to be racist. (Who the fuck cares if someone is racist in character?) Now there is a HL2RP server set in Africa and its doing /very/ well for itself.

-Terminator Is fun for awhile but it becomes stale a few months in after it ends up becoming back and forth robo v criminal war simulator and ends the same scripted way as it does in the films, Is it cool and a bad ass experience to be a future war soldier? fucking right it is - For a few months,-

The problem TnB (ZKG as it ought be called aka Zara Kane Gaming) is it's inability to do different settings, People have bitched and moaned for stalker and zombie rp time and time again, And why is it we never visit them? because a vocal minority of mouth breathers want HL2RP so they can roleplay their stupid cop characters or edgy airsoft larpers fursona rebel. Shit is stale af - like we use the same fucking maps every godamn time. Why has TnB never commissioned a city map you can slap a new name on TRP or HL2RP But like moving to the apartment below you unless things are different its the same fucking apartment and the move was pointless.

With other communities they're developing intercoms so you can communicate with the civilian factions, there are little things like being able to check your in-game digital bank or loyalty credit points something TnB doesnt seem to do, One such reason HL2RP in addition to the above has been such a failure for TnB time and time again is the lack of innovation, Go to Willard, Aurawatch, Synapse, Netspark, Nebulous. Any of these you will find an interactive enviroment where the city feels alive from the tech in it to the seemingly autonomous Dispatch system and the characters inhabiting that world, When I join TnB's city rp It feels like I'm in a city which has recently undergone a large war or some population control event it feels dead. Like even the sewers feel dead.


Some of you will go "Oh well we can pull together people when we need to, Yes you can beacuse events are fun they engage a person when all you have is events your population stagnates creativity dies and people dont do anything - you dont have rebels plotting to hiest the CWU warehouse using a hacked scanner or launch a mortar attack on a combine supply ship at the docks, What you get are people who play just enough to get gear drop the game after that sit in the discord and then pop on for an event it hits 15-25 people and they leave. It's sad.


I have high hopes TRP can break the mould as Lambda has evidentially been working hard and engaging with us community members about changes and he and his team deserve much praise - Hopefully we'll see an integration of weapons new fresh maps and characters so it doesn't feel so empty and dead (The NPC clankers will likely help fill in the blanks.



My point in this word salad to all and Gangleider Gangleider aswell, Is that TnB needs to focus on improving what it has currently and is less under used, Adding small things like an intercom system linked to a faction radio used by medics in the clinic so you can communicate with a doctor on call or a CWU worker/foreman - being able to have a system the way willard has with its terminals you can access or - Netspark/synapse/aura watch's in game application system.,... having your credit or loyalty point score effecting privilleges and area access - it's the little dystopian things you need that make a city feel alive - hearing dispatch drone out propaganda here and there. And the development of maps and revisiting under used old game modes - Why haven't we revisited ZRP ? we could easily set it up to where a basic story is crafted and we go "Okay so on September 30th the Event starts with city life and a few zombie outbreaks the police players will respond and slowly the outbreak happens in -x- american city" And we set an end date for 5-6 months or shorter depending from start. We have good proven popular concepts like Stalker RP which the community has begged to have back as long as I can remeber being a member here.


The Awnser is not Dark Rp thats just fucking stupid - Noone who is here for serious rp is going to play that past the inital launch hype.


TL:DR
- With hl2rp the key is making a city feel alive with small details.
- Bring back previous settings even if for a short term.
- Fuck Dark rp.
 
Why don't you just put up a bunch of servers for people to play on? Hold a community fill vote of 30 different games and select the top 6 or 7.

Since you're paying like $580 a month for a box, sounds like it's time to drum up some real community interest by being a community again, not just a forum/discord where people talk about RP and the good old days.

You want it to be perfect, but every one of these servers takes many months if not a year or more to be released and dies in 30 days flat. TnB was at its worst when everything centered around storyboarded admin-driven plots, it's always one or two admins burning themselves out while drama goes on behind the scenes about "lore accuracy" or "Dave's vision" and the average playercount gets slashed by half every week.

Don't you see that you just need to build it and they will come? The time for talk was over ten years ago, when you missed a perfect opportunity to apologize to everyone who was wrongly banned.

Do whatever you're gonna do, but if you care about your legacy, don't let it be another server nobody actually wants to play, like DarkRP. And don't let the last few announcements on this circle of hell be a bunch of corporate-speak where you try to convince yourself that doing the same thing after taking a break will somehow make it not fail this time.

Seems as if this whole name change debacle has the community at something of a Crossroads...

Lol I didn't want to say Anony in case someone got offended,
 
People have bitched and moaned for stalker and zombie rp time and time again, And why is it we never visit them?

One thing I've noticed from tnb is it's ability to play something, find out that it can't work in gmod the way they want it to, and then a year or so down the line, ask why they aren't doing it?

We've tried these things, they aren't sustainable as a permanent server. At least not on our current framework. Stalker does extremely well in DayZ, and ZRP does extremely well in project zomboid, those are frameworks built to enable that kind of rp, gmod is very much something that meshes well with the HL2RP or TRP formula. I love those settings, and I'd love to explore them in RRs, but there will be a point where the entire community jumps on the band wagon of 'why did we stop doing this?' only to overhype it and then realize that it's kinda shitty.

Yeah the argument can be made that it's the management, or the community, or the lack of players, but ask yourself why you are interested in these settings in the first place? Stalker to me has a lonely feeling of being a single person against a place of unknown danger and fortune, the game itself focuses on isolating you in your one-man army mission across the zone. So naturally in a server based on the setting, I want to be able to go off and explore the zone, and do things by myself like I would in the game. That doesn't work on gmod, not without a really powerful script or a really dedicated admin team to follow you around and facilitate that. Or you'd have to shed the entire appeal of the niche games and instead just make some weird hl2 reskin but in stalker.

Once again, I'm not saying don't do things with these settings, I'm saying know what you want from them and what they're going to need to work, or what you need to do to make them work. Don't fall into the trap of saying 'I want x' and then trying to make a permanent server off of it as quickly as possible, that's been a trademarked goto by the tnb community for some time now and it hasn't ended pleasantly.
 
In 2007, Taco N Banana was founded, and since then we have explored many settings together—from Half-Life, Terminator, and Stalker to Halo, our own renditions of zombie apocalypse settings, and various RRs. For seventeen years, we’ve stood as a household name in Garry’s Mod. Many servers that have come and gone have used our content for their projects, from maps to models. Our fingerprints are everywhere on this hobby.

But something else has accompanied that name, bringing down the best of our ideas and worlds, and distancing many people from here. The very toxicity, tolerance for intolerance, and persistent neurotic behavior that have dragged our community through the mud has also defiled its name—for new players and old. Cycles of neuroticism persist despite all efforts to permanently expunge them. As a consequence, almost two decades of woes and grief stain our name in the wider Garry’s Mod sphere, crippling our new player retention and our ability to find more developers.

The truth is, there are few places on Garry’s Mod to do what we do here anymore. Players are splintered and divided across these spaces because of the cycles that we have failed to break. Many have sworn off Garry’s Mod forever over their sour experiences with this community, and the onus of responsibility falls upon the leaders to rectify that.

If there is to be a future for this place, it must be one where everyone can feel welcome, and the cycles of the past are truly left behind us. If there are ever to be new memories to be made, the way we do things has to change—for good, this time.



In light of the above, we have set forth on the long, long road to begin reshaping this place from top to bottom. The culture of this place has to change, and there are many big and little things that will need to be done to achieve that shift—from how our administration is picked and organized to how we approach server projects and how moderation is applied within the public spaces we provide.

This will include an entire facelift and reorganization of the community spaces on the forums and Discord, and most pertinently, a name change. We want to make sure that the changes we are making stick, and that we leave the past behind us. This was not a decision made lightly, especially given how sentimental many of us are about the good memories made over the years, but we feel that this is ultimately the best way forward.

To aid in this effort, we have some returning faces who have already been at work reshaping the way forward: @skylion, cindyslug cindyslug , and @TankNut will be stepping up to the role of Community Leadership. TankNut will also be heading development efforts on our current (more on that in a moment) and future projects.
I honestly cannot comment on our reputation with other communities because I don't visit them, I'm here browsing the forums and playing the server, that's how I know if the community is doing good or bad. I fully agree that we have a long history of toxicity from teenage angst trying to get one over everyone else to what seems to be our latest debacle of actual Nazis trying to plot to bring the server down but was stopped like every Nazi plan really. We manage to stop this because we still have reasonable people at the helm who catch these problems that none of have a clue about half the time because of communication. All we can do is try to continue to improve, try teach those who break the rules and kick them out if they don't improve. Alt-account cold war...

About three years ago? Bennet had a whole kerfuffle and the community felt like it was gonna end, RDAs leaving all at once, things were grim. But we pulled ourselves back up by our bootstraps and started again and since then it's at least felt like we've made progress at least in-public. Yes it's a battle, but it's one we have to continue to fight for the sake of the people who want to be here for good intentions. Changing the name admits defeat and we're not dead yet. What we can do is set forth with real communication with the community to create a core team and rules that are really adhered to. It'd end up being like Twitter anyway.

I was kind of expecting Cindy to take some sort of role with their return, Sky was a little surprising and TankNut is understandable but why wasn't communication opened up with the rest of the admin teams when their are clear candidates in the wings to take these roles? Correct me if I'm wrong but only Lambda and Decepti were told about this big change. Their have been admins here who have been in the trenches for years trying to keep this place going, they should have a chance to help lead the community when they clearly have the energy to-do so. Maybe these three are the best we're gonna get but it should of at-least been debated across the team in my opinion.
With the sunsetting of this HL2 iteration ahead, we’re going to take a period of time off from serious roleplay while we re-examine our approach to better fit the current times and how expectations have changed over the years. During this period, we’ll likely be exploring alternatives like shorter-term play sessions of various games inside and outside of Garry’s Mod, to bide the time between projects as well as foster a stronger sense of community outside of our own personal bubbles.

One of the ways we’ll be exploring that change in approach is by hosting our own in-house developed server using DarkRP as a framework—one that will prominently feature the community’s past settings like HL2 and TRP as a sort of crossover episode between what we consider to be the best our community has had to offer. We’ll go into more detail on the specifics in another thread to be posted within the next few days, but we’re generally aiming for a more ‘classic’ experience, focused on player freedom rather than stringent rules like NLR/FailRP or overly flashy pre-packaged GmodStore addons. We’re not just hoping to run a standard DarkRP server here, but to make the gamemode our own and craft a unique experience you won’t find elsewhere.

As for TRP, the server continues to be under development by Lambda and his team, and the changes announced today don’t have any impact on our continued support for the project. Moving on past the launch of our DarkRP, we will be working on our future endeavors into serious roleplay and we'd ask that everyone takes the opportunity to decompress. It's simple to acknowledge that there have been many issues plaguing our recent roleplay servers, and we'd like to take a brief respite from hosting them in rapid succession. This is so that we can take our time working on script development, world building, possible roleplay dynamics, all of the good things that go into a successful server.



There still remains much to be done regarding this monumental effort, and we’ll provide more information in the near future as more of the complete picture is ironed out. We hope you understand now why things have been so quiet on our front, and why discretion was needed as we continue to draw this project together.

Here’s to even more memories together.
I'm all for opening up new casual gaming across the community, maybe hosting weekend games for casual play, I think we direly needed as we need more casual communication and nothing does that better than surviving hoards of zombies on Left 4 Dead. But with all this, if their is enough interest and backing we should continue to support serious roleplay.

I'm honestly not sure if I'd be interested in some kind of DarkRP server and I do think people are jumping the gun before we get more information. I for one appreciate S2K to break things up and maybe this is the thing to scratch that itch. But I also have limited time enough, I enjoy this community for the serious roleplay we create. We need to continue to communicate with each other and not be soo quick to jump down each others throats. I'm all for exploring new avenues of attracting new players, new server types might help that, but we need clear communication with people we trust to helm the community so we can create our own content without having to worry about some behaviour or players allowed to fester and ruin it for everyone else. Maybe if we show a strong united front more people will return and those that do join our community stay because they feel like they can actually invest their time here.
 
One thing I've noticed from tnb is it's ability to play something, find out that it can't work in gmod the way they want it to, and then a year or so down the line, ask why they aren't doing it?

We've tried these things, they aren't sustainable as a permanent server. At least not on our current framework. Stalker does extremely well in DayZ, and ZRP does extremely well in project zomboid, those are frameworks built to enable that kind of rp, gmod is very much something that meshes well with the HL2RP or TRP formula. I love those settings, and I'd love to explore them in RRs, but there will be a point where the entire community jumps on the band wagon of 'why did we stop doing this?' only to overhype it and then realize that it's kinda shitty.

Yeah the argument can be made that it's the management, or the community, or the lack of players, but ask yourself why you are interested in these settings in the first place? Stalker to me has a lonely feeling of being a single person against a place of unknown danger and fortune, the game itself focuses on isolating you in your one-man army mission across the zone. So naturally in a server based on the setting, I want to be able to go off and explore the zone, and do things by myself like I would in the game. That doesn't work on gmod, not without a really powerful script or a really dedicated admin team to follow you around and facilitate that. Or you'd have to shed the entire appeal of the niche games and instead just make some weird hl2 reskin but in stalker.

Once again, I'm not saying don't do things with these settings, I'm saying know what you want from them and what they're going to need to work, or what you need to do to make them work. Don't fall into the trap of saying 'I want x' and then trying to make a permanent server off of it as quickly as possible, that's been a trademarked goto by the tnb community for some time now and it hasn't ended pleasantly.

This is a great point actually, I think limiting ourselves to just GMod and trying to cram things into it that don't really work is just making things harder than it needs to be. Obviously HL2RP is going to work best in GMod because Source Engine, and TRP as well just because of all the work that's been put into making it a thing (can't really think of any other game that would allow it at or above the level it is in GMod.) I love NWN but I'm not sure how that'd work for anything that isn't a fantasy setting, though if we ever do plan something like that I can't think of a better option.

Of course, the problem that comes up with that is that everyone here owns GMod, but not everyone owns Project Zomboid or DayZ (or can even run it on their PC in the first place.)
 
Of course, the problem that comes up with that is that everyone here owns GMod, but not everyone owns Project Zomboid or DayZ (or can even run it on their PC in the first place.)

And that's okay. It's like saying 'Oh man I want to play natural selection 2 but I don't have it. Guess I'll get it so I can enjoy it"

If we were doing a complete engine swap from gmod to something else, then yeah, I'd say that's kind of fucked, but maintaining our IPS on gmod and branching out into other games for RP as well? I don't think there's any real harm in that. If people want to play those games and be apart of that rp, then maybe dishing out the 5-10 dollars for it (cus lets be honest we're not doing any rp on some overpriced triple A titles) is something they'll have to do. After all isn't that what we did with gmod?

NWN is 5 bucks a key, PZ is often on sale for 10 or so dollars. Doing stuff on these games I don't feel is locking out the community as long as we retain our presence on gmod. It just offers more rp on more frameworks for more people, and if it's successful, it might even draw in players from that game and expand the community further.

Though I would fs say we'd want to stay away from performance heavy or really expensive titles. Niche RP has always been our thing, and there's plenty of cheap niche rp games out there.
 
Bennet was the one that wanted to do it, I just was the one who made the post. I'm sure he can back me up if he so wished since he's around atm.

If that's the case then I apologize for insinuating blame. Can only go off of memory and it seemed like it wasn't just him at the time.

As for the rest of your concerns, I don't think they are unwarranted. Both Sky and I have been apart of the very culture Gangleider is talking about in the main post and to see us brought back from the mist is an understandable shake-up after having been distant for so long. Frankly, I didn't actually come back with this intention.

But I saw exactly what Gangleider, Sky and TankNut each saw: A community on the edge of a cliff. Forum and server activity was dead low for over two months, and no one to reasonably fill the chasm left by Bennet. And there was no one to step up to that plate from the existing community or admins that knew how to address the bigger picture than just maybe fixing a roleplay server.
This is not true… You, Flood, and I spent several days talking about what could be done if all three of us stepped up to the plate… how we’d address HL2 and how it functions…. Community issues… the team…

I guess what I'm inferring here is that you did in fact wish to seek such a role out. I don't get the point in not just being blunt about it. You came back the day bennet left and I immediately assumed you'd try and find a way back in, so why not just be transparent about it? That'd be a better foundation to build on. Ultimately it's something you were offered so I am not even upset with you about the decision, but it begs the question why not place somebody new into a community leadership position that...I don't know...has been dedicating their mind and soul to trying to keep this iteration afloat, pushes the whole narrative that we need to be receptive to players and should base our decisions off of? Flood would've been the person who came to mind for me and I could see the guy blossoming in a role like that. But instead, you waltz in and brazenly state 'there was nobody to step up to the plate'. I just disagree. I'm still optimistic and not completely doubting the capability of you all, I just think it's crazy to brush off the work some people have been putting in at the community even in it's current state.

As for what other community spaces think of us - a name change isn't going to change that and even if we tried to cover up the past, folks are still going to find out some of the weirdos that have crossed this place and they'll either think the whole community a cesspit from it or they won't. I hope the pushback from literally almost every reply in the thread is taken into consideration going forward, otherwise we're just continuing down the same path as before.
 
lmao youre edgy
Its not an edgy thing, I dont care if someone says the N word in character beacuse they're playing a racist piece of shit. If jamal the 9ft black caricature is running around spamming the hard r every sentence ban them and be done with it my point was Everyone in TnB is a fucking adult or close enough its time to grow up and say "Hey lets try a different thing and if people get offended they can choose not to play or we can moderate it.

Fuck off with the "You're edgy" shit what is this 2018?
 
Its not an edgy thing, I dont care if someone says the N word in character beacuse they're playing a racist piece of shit. If jamal the 9ft black caricature is running around spamming the hard r every sentence ban them and be done with it my point was Everyone in TnB is a fucking adult or close enough its time to grow up and say "Hey lets try a different thing and if people get offended they can choose not to play or we can moderate it.

Fuck off with the "You're edgy" shit what is this 2018?
I just refuse to believe you're an actual real person and not a shitposting alt at this point man
 
Its not an edgy thing, I dont care if someone says the N word in character beacuse they're playing a racist piece of shit. If jamal the 9ft black caricature is running around spamming the hard r every sentence ban them and be done with it my point was Everyone in TnB is a fucking adult or close enough its time to grow up and say "Hey lets try a different thing and if people get offended they can choose not to play or we can moderate it.

Fuck off with the "You're edgy" shit what is this 2018?
Considering we literally had, like, an evil nazi cabal infiltrate the community and influence the decisions of the admin team to turn the server into their personal playground, I don't think "Let me be racist i promise we're mature and anyone who wants to play a racist totally has good reasons for it" is a good argument.
 
If that's the case then I apologize for insinuating blame. Can only go off of memory and it seemed like it wasn't just him at the time.




I guess what I'm inferring here is that you did in fact wish to seek such a role out. I don't get the point in not just being blunt about it. You came back the day bennet left and I immediately assumed you'd try and find a way back in, so why not just be transparent about it? That'd be a better foundation to build on. Ultimately it's something you were offered so I am not even upset with you about the decision, but it begs the question why not place somebody new into a community leadership position that...I don't know...has been dedicating their mind and soul to trying to keep this iteration afloat, pushes the whole narrative that we need to be receptive to players and should base our decisions off of? Flood would've been the person who came to mind for me and I could see the guy blossoming in a role like that. But instead, you waltz in and brazenly state 'there was nobody to step up to the plate'. I just disagree. I'm still optimistic and not completely doubting the capability of you all, I just think it's crazy to brush off the work some people have been putting in at the community even in it's current state.

As for what other community spaces think of us - a name change isn't going to change that and even if we tried to cover up the past, folks are still going to find out some of the weirdos that have crossed this place and they'll either think the whole community a cesspit from it or they won't. I hope the pushback from literally almost every reply in the thread is taken into consideration going forward, otherwise we're just continuing down the same path as before.

There’s a genuine & proper follow-up post to everything in this thread coming up but since this is directly at me I’ll comment.

My conversations with Flood and Red Menace were entirely in the light of improving either the current HL2 or getting a start on the right foot for the next. I was pretty clear with them that if someone offered me the opportunity I’d take it, but I wasn’t in any rush to get back into the chair after I had spoken with Bennet a little after I had stepped back onto the forums.

That’s all I’ll add for now until Gangleider makes his reply. At work so I won’t be extremely present.
 
Considering we literally had, like, an evil nazi cabal infiltrate the community and influence the decisions of the admin team to turn the server into their personal playground, I don't think "Let me be racist i promise we're mature and anyone who wants to play a racist totally has good reasons for it" is a good argument.
If I had a nickel for every time a secret neo-nazi cabal tried worm their way into the admin team to ban people they didn't like

i'd have like five nickels
 
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