The Pulse: Community Catch Up | 2WC 17 Apr

[Pollux]

I have been a supporter of this management team and had trust that you guys actually get forward. I do understand that changes take time and I am sure many will agree. However.. it is truly sad to see what has happened in those 6 months. I do not understand why you guys are still working on it. I would suggest to hand over the server to someone who actually has time to work on it. These updates are poor and you guys can’t catch the community‘s attention anymore. I totally agree to Jan. I think we came to a point in which hope has actually fallen. I know it’s hard to create a new FL for the Community.. or go back to an old version. You haven’t given the Community the chance to see your vision. We haven’t been informed of new content coming to the server or something special that we could be waiting for. - And if you tell me that the inventory refactor is the biggest update of all the upcoming things.. then I am sad and disappointed

Rocky, I've already spoken to you in DMs not too long ago so this is a bit confusing considering I directly address some of the things you're saying now. Everything we're working on is not a secret, we've talked about it in detail and at length before we even started. The progress we've made in the last 6 months is also significantly better than the 6 months before that. I think a lot of people are forgetting that FL was completely dead before we took over. We knew it'd be a revival attempt from almost 0, and we're treating it as exactly that.

I am trying very hard to respond sincerely in this case, but it is difficult when the posts in this thread more or less equate to "pollux bad" and "devs not working hard enough!!"

Again, I have to make everyone here aware that the dev team are volunteers, and you are always free to start your own gmod community

1) It is absolutely correct that the dev team are volunteers. Hence, it would indeed be improper to expect them to commit to it full-time. However, I think when people bring up the "staff are volunteers!" argument they forget one detail: Nobody forced them to volunteer. If you do volunteer, then you kind of do have a responsibility to provide the services of that role you volunteered for.

This is like volunteering at, say, a chess club, doing absolutely nothing in said club and complaining that you are but a volunteer when people point your inactivity out. If you don't have the time to commit to whatever project you volunteered for, simply don't volunteer. Or resign.

2) If the sole argument you can bring to keep people is "Oh well? Then start your own community" then that means FL already is dead. To use the chess analogy above - I wouldn't expect a chess team who starts telling its members they are "free to start a new one" upon complaints to last much longer.

I respect the work devs and staff in general put into this, mind you. I simply don't like how people point out the benefits of volunteerism (AKA not treating it as seriously as a full-time job) but not the responsibilities thereof. And to address the thread itself - I'm sure developers put their hearts and a lot of effort into this update, but I hope they also realise this is rather demoralising to the same community that has been awaiting proper, actual progress for 6 months.

I don't get the "no proper progress for 6 months" bit at all, as we've very clearly shown a lot of progress? You are also right, FL is already dead and was for a while before we took it. This is a revival attempt, not a regular big update. That's why we're putting so much work into it and also why we're taking our time. Again, I think a lot are forgetting that we only took the servers down because no one was on for several months anyway. The attempt last summer was good, but it's clear we need to 10x that to actually be sustainable for any meaningful time.