Haven't been on here since 2011 and wanted to share how things used to be.

The server could maintain 32 people on rp_downtown_v2. There was lag here and there but it was overall playable, there were simple stretch goals with plants maxed such as increased health, permanent gun license and finally the notorious knife that only the most dedicated players would get at 200 plants maxed. It may be a surprise to you, but in terms of scripting, addons or mods that is all we had and it was amazing.

The combination of a small map with depth to it (i.e the sewers; which no longer exist in downtown for some god awful reason) mixed with very little convolution to the base RP lua, made it so that the players were entirely community driven. Server wide player made events where even the admins would join in were a thing.

Admins and mods were always chill dudes without sticks up their asses, to become a mod you used to make a forum post and get approval from the community. Donations for special privileges, weapons or different player models did not exist.

There was only 1 option for fast money making and it came from drug plants. They took 45+ minutes to level up to lvl 5 which would yield 10k a plant. There was no way to make it grow fast and no way to go above 5.

Now this may be my nostalgia tinted goggles view on things but there was a genuine sense of community which I struggled to find anywhere on gmod past the downtown_v2 era. When Chute introduced a major rehaul of the server in 2011 removing all of the progress players made with drug plants and wallets the server witnessed a sudden dip and a major shift in player base. The mass progression of classes, weapon unlocks, plant unlocks and an increase to server capacity ruined what little was left of the community cohesion the server had going for it. People were now stuck in the "rpg" mentality minding their own business and trying to unlock everything looking at the unlocks as the purpose to play on the server.

I had to get this off my chest and pay homage to what used to be the most enjoyable experience you could find in gmod. RIP |FP| 2009-2011 the golden era of RP.

What happened? Well, from what I was around to see, the server was popular at the time I was on. People were getting a little bored and the Reboot update was announced. A lot of people were excited, then the server changed over to the beta, looking at Zarp 3 I have stuff I had from that beta on there, seeming transferred over. Anyways, the server was completely new, some people liked it, some people saw how similar to Zarp it was and complained. When we went back to downtown we had another wipe and a large chunk left. After some players built back up, what little left there was, one more wiped cleared the rest of the active player base. With an empty server no one would join. The only people that would go on would be on for a few hours alone printing money. At some point there was a map change to Downtown V6_something which brought back the sewers.

Pretty much what happened to the player base is several wallet and xp wipes, an update similar to Zarp and slow development with promises unfulfilled. At some point the map changed and, if you look at the game-tracker page, people come and go for a few hours every few days. Not sure if any of them come back as I never see names, might just be people drifting about or old players slowly raising their stats in the background while they hope they can get the server to be popular again. Who knows...

the shitty ass admins prevailed, and killed the server because of their egotistical tyranny

It's the mother fucken truth!!!

Friendly Players is the longest running Garry's Mod community in existence. We're so proud of how long it's been running and we're exciting to reboot everyone's favourite server with the Reboot Update. Look forwards not backwards!

Sometimes i really miss downtown_v2...

For an example, everytime Grabovski joined the server, you just knew the c4's were coming ;D

I wonder where the those updates are on the reboot development...

From what I could tell is that raids and takeovers were the main things to do on the server, which probably helped greatly in its downfall. Rarely did I ever see any peaceful/passive types of gameplay. I personally, had the most when I RPed as a DJ or built treehouses and boats as a hobo, though a fair amount of the time I would get raided and have my creations be destroyed by a gangster or SWAT. It also didn't help the server when item and progression resets happened.

@OP

Wow, one post in all of those 7 years (you joined in 2010).
I as well joined at that time (2011). You might have often seen me as mob boss or gangster, primarily basing in the yellow warehouse, slums (someone needs to specify it as the "trap" for 2017). I often based with reegz (Reginald Englesworth at the time) and Jasper Beardly. I am sure we have met before.

Perhaps you will be back one day as you haven't been since you posted this thread.

Chuteuk wrote:


If you really wanted to update FPRP then you would have done so long ago. This community is runned by the players, not by you or any of your high position followers. For 3 god damn year have people constantly been trying to get the community going again, but haven't been able to because a certain group is not capable of keeping their promises.
Doesn't matter if you've ran the show for years, at least half of those years the server has had less than 10 players on daily.