Please don’t ignore the “Never Played” tag, made a CFX account to leave this review.
Third time posting as reviews were previously wiped to remove negative reviews
I played a singular character, Blondie the Bounty Hunter, daily in DRB for just a little over 5 months (ask IC about her, search the Discord for mentions of Blondie, she was there!). She was well known and liked in New Dakota for her gruff kindness and somewhat terrifying presence. I had a great time playing her; made connections and helped in so many other stories along the way from assisting Law to shooting the shit with well known Crims to buying horses for newbies just because I could. This server was a genuine delight to come to day after day even with its bugs and hiccups. The updates this server pushed out made just traveling around interesting and engaging even on quiet days and the crafting was simple but engaging enough to keep you occupied in getting all that “book learning” to level up your cores. Overall a great place to learn the ropes and get a feel for RP in RedM without worrying about a phonebook of rules or worrying over RPing the “right” way.
I was thinking of splitting my time between New Dakota and another server as well, I didn’t wanna abandon all the friends I had made here or miss out on more stories to come. I made the mistake of privately inviting a few friends to come along to check out a new server with me, no promise of anything beyond that, and with no other previous temp bans, rulebreaks, or infractions on my record in this server, I found myself permabanned from the discord with no warning and no notice as to why, locking me out of DRB entirely with no way to make an appeal ticket myself. It took a lot of teeth pulling in the form of multiple tickets submitted by friends who still had access to get an answer as to why I was banned until the topic was mentioned offhand in a voice call with the Operations Manager PonyMacaroni/PMac about an entirely different topic to get her to mention “it’s cause they were poaching*”.
(*poaching - the act of taking players from one rp community to set up in another for one’s own benefit or with promise of benefits to the moved players.)
Last I checked I wasn’t promising anyone a full ride in any other server I joined, I wasn’t even expecting them to play friends of my character as that is the beauty of RP. I’ll admit wholeheartedly saying I was “blatantly kidnapping” is easily misconstrued when it was intended as a joke, my bad, as for “economic hellscape” that was certainly the truth, but syntax aside sure, let’s call it poaching.
I get it, losing a player base is a huge hit to a server (moreso if the regular playerbase isn’t hitting into the 100s, but this is not the case for DRB), but shutting out a dedicated, unproblematic, and (not to toot my own horn too loudly) very much liked character PERMANENTLY with again NO PREVIOUS INFRACTIONS and NO NOTICE WHATSOEVER and NO METHOD TO APPEAL THE BAN? For privately inviting a few people to part-time elsewhere? On what was most likely word of mouth from another person who saw fit to flag me with no other input or question asking?
Pinnacle of childish, petty behavior and wholly disappointing that the Operations Manager can’t be bothered to even provide a reason let alone further clarification that this was a rulebreak and offer a strike to perhaps retain a dedicated player instead of losing them. PMac has no accountability with what she does, her word is final with no second opinion even if the decision is unfair, myopic, and alienating. If you end up on her bad side she will roadblock and needle you until you pipe down or get out, and she prides herself on being the “The Raging B–ch” of DRB (used as a display name in the server discord, now changed since this review to “Unfair and Ineffective” as per the review title, hi PMac I see you!!) and vocally stated that she does not like moderating this server and dislikes the playerbase. Not a good look PMac.
That brings me to another point; previously while I was active in server I had seen griefers and trolls break rules time and again with ingame law players taking on a near-moderator duty to send them to Sisika only to have them return day after day with no visible action from upper moderation. Or in the case of one well known criminal Juan Doe, preferential treatment from the Operations Manager PMac (cause ofc you will make exemptions for your irl bestie right?) and never seeing anything more than a temp ban for things you would get permabanned with no exception for elsewhere.
I had seen people take the Relaxed RP/Casual RP concept and stretch it for a mile with immersion-destroying joke characters who would walk right through your serious RP moment only to immediately ruin whatever scenario you had going (FailRP).
I had heard and seen gangs rig interactions in their favour, throw fits when they didn’t get other people to walk into their obvious traps, and threaten getting “The Government” (read; Moderators) involved when they “lost” their interactions (Powergaming).
I had interacted with players who openly defied the Fear of Life rule simply for having “More Books”/better core stats (FailRP) or abused tonics and bumrushed people to get their win (Powergaming).
I had seen first hand what could have been a tense and interesting RP interaction get blindsided by PvP dynamite abuse (FailRP & Powergaming), folks break hogties and bolas with the cancel command (Powergaming & Server Rulebreak), and moderators use noclip and teleport to their advantage in character (Powergaming and I’m positive that is a Rulebreak).
For my biggest gripe; Mumbles portrayed by TMAD (Upper developer and streamer) regularly steamrolled his plots over those of others and talk over people trying to give him an interaction, rely on “supernatural” story/mod menu powers to support his story, play his own enemies on a “cousin” character and flagrantly use information gained on another character to ensure his stories only go his way, OPENLY USE THE IN-SERVER LIVE PLAYER LIST TO METAGAME PLAYER NAMES TO CONTROL THE NARRATIVE ON AT LEAST TWO OCCASIONS (One of which was against me, while on stream, and then the vods went missing afterwards how curious. When I approached him privately after hearing this from a friend to clarify what my friend had seen on his stream he denied doing so, real cute move), and blatantly show he only has interest in his own rail-roaded story when he’s offered chances to broaden his plot with genuine interaction (FailRP & Metagaming & Powergaming & Server Rulebreak!! Four for four, holy ban-bait Batman!!).
Instead: No punishments, no mod intervention. Not even a discernible peep.
Albeit at the time of these events a number of the aforementioned rulebreakers were Moderators or Developers and had ways of covering their tracks, but as such you should be people the community look up for for top-quality rp, not freaking this.
Play in New Dakota if you want, just be wary, this place is fun with the right people and there are tons of fun things to get up to here, you just have to be smart of what and who you get involved with.
This is not the first issue someone has had with PMac, nor the last time she has acted callous towards the group she has been tasked to help moderate.
This is not the first issue people have had with trusted staff using tools granted in good faith to them to help the community instead using them for their own benefit.
I have no intentions to return here whatsoever; server management has made it clear that losing someone who genuinely loved the place they made doesn’t really matter, the risk of their numbers going down does (and you wonder why if you don’t play for 180 days they delete your characters, it’s a ploy to keep you in even if you aren’t having fun), and openly mocking people that they push out is not beneath them (Fair and Effective? Check your head, lead dev.)
If this review makes you angry as a moderator or developer for New Dakota, good.
(A good few of those frowny face reacts are from Mods or Devs dear reader!)
I invite you as passionate fans of the series who are here to make something better than what we were given to keep working on this server and be critical of your team and your actions and prove every word of this review wrong, the people who play here and believe that this is a fair, respectful, and friendly server shouldn’t be lied to so blatantly and repeatedly or look up to a team who can’t be trusted to be honest and upright with them in and out of county. No amount of blood, sweat, and tears shed over a server can make up for a team and server that continues to fail it’s playerbase in terms of mechanic balancing, quality of RP, and treating people with even a base amount of respect expected from a bigger server. Does this piping hot take make me “Unworthy” of your server? Sure, why not.
You were great while you lasted New Dakota, hate I got to know you this way but glad I got out when I did.
TL;DR - Got banned unfairly w/no appeal, upper staffmember responsible prone to tantrums and has heavily biased views of moderation, rest of staff on shaky grounds in terms of playing fair and adequate moderation. 2/10 give this one a miss.