The Pulse: Community Catch Up | 2WC 4 Sept

[Pollux]

-snip-

I do think you're missing the point completely. This isn't a business nor will it be treated like one. We don't care about making anything from this, server costs being covered is nice but not a requirement. FL will also not be "sold" or anything like that, because I don't care about running FL like a business or trying to make money. If what we're trying doesn't work, we've proven FL's CityRP as a concept is no longer viable and will move on to new things. If it works, then we'll keep it going for as long as it can. This is ultimately a passion project for myself and others, something it always should've been.

It's really common for many to ask what exactly will bring players back, and the answer to that is there isn't anything like that. If it was that easy FL wouldn't have ever died. Everyone is going to have their own different ideas and none of which are likely to directly do much. Some want FL to not change at all or go back, even though we've proven this isn't going to work. Most want drastic change, but mostly without any ideas on exactly what or how. There isn't any single or even multiple things that will "bring players", because that just isn't how it works. You make something because it is fun and fits in well, that helps to "bring players" but it isn't a guarantee either. FL hasn't really followed this well, as a result there's a bunch of things which just aren't fun or don't fit. This isn't good for bringing in players, and many of these things can be attributed to the slow death it has had.

With that said, our current direction is obvious. We're changing a lot, pretty much anything that isn't fun or is stupid should change in some way. The result is going to be a significantly different gamemode and experience. This will disappoint some, however, the hard truth is if you wanted nothing to change you should've played before we were forced to adapt. FL died quite naturally due to stagnation, and the solution to that is rip it all apart to make it both better and different. 

It has definitely taken significantly longer than any of us wanted to make progress which is unfortunate but far from a massive issue. We've had the community pulse to keep everyone up to date, regardless of how much we get done, every two weeks. When a lot gets done at once, we've have a dev blog as we did earlier this year. Not too sure why you think this is the first time we've posted anything in a year, when that simply isn't true. When the time comes we'll focus on making sure we have the best chance at a successful relaunch. This doesn't just involve existing players as we do recognise many have moved on to other things. We're trying to make something new, exciting and most importantly sustainable for a long time. This is the only thing we haven't tried yet, so it is worth doing so.

In relation to S&box and such, we're very aware of what it is and what it isn't as we've had access to it for over two years now. It isn't Garry's Mod because it doesn't want to be anything like Garry's Mod, it is trying to be more of a game engine similar to Unity or Unreal Engine. S&box is definitely quite cool and I've really enjoyed messing around with it, however, it is important to recognise that "gmod RP" as a whole doesn't work there (this is a good thing, just important to recognise) because it just isn't anything like Gmod. It is way closer to Roblox than it is to Gmod, which isn't a bad thing, but it is important to recognise. There also isn't much point in committing to any large project with it anyway, as it still has a year or even two to go with major breaking changes in-between. It definitely isn't close to release, even next year is debatable. If you'd like to read more about this, see here: https://sbox.facepunch.com/news/retooling

You would do better and save more time if you just reverted FL to what it was back in 2011.

No, reverting for nostalgia has already been tried and resulted in almost nothing. The truth is you or anyone else doesn't miss FL because of its gamemode or similar back in the day, you miss being young with nothing better to do than play on the servers all day long. Reverting back to the old gamemode doesn't bring that feeling back, nothing ever will. Nostalgia can definitely be very strong, none of it is over the gamemode though. We're not going to make the same mistake and try cater to nostalgia again. To be completely blunt, those who wanted FL to never change should've played when they had the chance. We've only ever made major changes because we were forced to do so in order to keep FL going. Things change and we have to adapt to those changes, otherwise it slowly dies off as we've seen.

For better or worse, things will change significantly. Some people will hate it while others will like it, that's normal and expected. We're just going to roll with what makes the most sense to us and we'll see what happens from there. Not everything will be perfect, but most of it should be positive as we do have a very experienced team.

---

tl;dr: We're making major changes as we've already tried everything else, these major changes are aimed at making the gamemode more enjoyable and sustainable. This isn't a business, it is just a passion project. We're working on FL as it is fun to do so and we look forward to be being able to share our work with everyone. We genuinely believe what we're working will result in one of the best gmod RP experiences around and the best the gamemode can possibly be. This doesn't guarantee success, but we'll try make it work.