Gamemode Longevity

[blu]

Won't happen, we asked already

No problem with asking again... and again... and again... until someone does something about it.

We shouldn't give up too easily, especially those of us who have been here for almost a decade now.

I'm also pretty sure if there was enough support for the idea, even now, the administration would do something about it.

I was also thinking that if the cost of running a server was a primary reason not to have one up until "everything is ready," those of us who are willing, could contribute to covering that cost in an effort to keep the show running.

The current state of the community is detrimental and regretful, and if this goes on any longer, it'll make things more difficult down the line.

What I noticed from some catching up I did last night is that some of the issues that existed where the retention of players, the overall interest in the gamemode, and the drama that unfolded ever since soul left just to mention a few, and that the overhaul had to be substantial enough to make things fun and to provide something for everyone, even during the hours where there wouldn't be enough players for RP to take place.

In my opinion, 2016 FL was simple enough to be fun yet allow for complex RP situations to take place. For instance, I remember Pollux saying something about how players don't make dupes anymore like there once used to be, and that the overall culture/expectation of the average player has now changed for whatever reason. To that I would say that FL's gradual development and evolution over the years caused this to be the case, and if we revert some aspects, make the game less complicated that people would join up and we'd have no problem retaining players and potentially see some growth.


Pollux mentioned a reason for keeping the servers down besides the cost, and it's the fact that there was a month where no one joined and the state of FL was a mess at that point - I wasn't there when all that happened so I'm clueless for the most part - so, he figured he'd shut the servers down because "you can't kill what's already dead and that something dead can't get any more dead," until the team had a solution ready.

While that decision may have seemed wise, and while it also made people miss FL, 3-6 months of this would have been more than enough.

What I'm seeing is tunnel vision at its finest, and suffocating the community while trying to make something groundbreaking to save it is ironic to say the least.

From what I gather, FL's evolution over the years has caused it to become too complex, and that perhaps has caused a decrease in the retention of new players and, I would argue, made the inevitable departure of existing ones even sooner. 

Think of it as an experiment at least, load up an older version of the gamemode and see how players react with it. Call it FL Classic. 

Leniency, tolerance, and lowering the bar would allow for the integration of this new tiktok-brain, short attention span generation.

Let's be frank about something, I don't think the young players these days have the attention span let alone the patience for Super-Serious RP, we would need to allow for there to be a level of leniency for funny memorable situations to occur.

I also want to reiterate a crucial point: GMod is far from dead, it is in fact anything but and ultimately if there's a problem with keeping players when it used to so easy to fill up 2 servers at one point, then the problem may exist within the changes implemented over the years.

And again if it's about the cost, I'm pretty sure some if not many of us here are willing to chip in to get anything up at the very least.

Anything is better than whatever we have right now.