Gamemode Longevity

[blu]

Title of Suggestion: Longevity

Description
Load up the last or any version of the game mode onto a server and let's keep rocking around the clock folks.

It adds to the lifespan of this community.

Why?
GMod isn't a dead game yet by far, so why kill one of the last, lasting communities in the game before time?

While many of us understand that the development process for GTA 12: Fearless RP is meticulous and precise, poised to annihilate the summit of all expectations, and more importantly baffle all the haters and nay-sayers, a humble few would rather play on even the 2008 version of the server rather than wait for FL CityRP "3" 

I'm pretty sure many would appreciate this idea especially since we're about a year in this stasis-like limbo with no concrete deadline or time frame for development completion. 

It's unsettling to see some of the last posts regarding in-game events date back to mid-2022, knowing full well the servers have been offline, yet the forum is still up and we're all acting like this is natural. 

No one is posting anymore, and fewer and fewer people will even bother to hop on the forum eventually.

It makes one wonder that if the goal was to end the wonderful nostalgic journey and bury FL with all the other communities before it, a nice announcement and a shutdown would have sufficed. 

I just do not think it's fair to all those who are still taking a look at the forum every once in a while hoping to see the servers back up only to be disappointed when they feel like they have to wait a lifetime for something that seems fleeting at this point.

I'm pretty sure that there are some here who only ever played GMod for this community, some who, to them, the entire game is just this server and to leave everyone hanging in the hope that someday soon in around 2024 or maybe Q1 2025  there will be a server with the GTA 69 game mode which will recreate GMod and propel it to #1 on Steam's Most Played chart, is unfair, to put it bluntly. 

I don't think that anyone here is desperate, but to me at least it is something I think about now and then. 

Also, an observation: The vibe I've been getting from FL is corporate-like. I don't get it, it used to be more laid back and bubbly from what I remember. 

Maybe I'm just getting older though who knows?

The long and short of it would be to either load up an older version of the game mode and bring the community back to life or just give us the closure we didn't know we needed. (unless you're secretly trying to pull a GMod Tower and release a whole ass game on Steam then still do the former.)

Thank you and all the best.

[Ranger]

Won't happen, we asked already

[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.

[Pollux]

An older version of the gamemode was already tried and didn't last for more than a day before dying, doing it again would be a short nostalgic trip that doesn't really help us. Ultimately all changes to the gamemode were done to maintain the server with most being positively received. If those changes didn't happen, FL would've been dead many years ago. We know this because a lot of major updates were only done in response to the server dying rather than being planned before a drop in players, and each did succeed in fixing that drop. It would be so much easier for us to throw up an older version of the gamemode and call it a day, but we also know doing so would be completely giving up. I'd rather do something that has some chance of working, especially as we likely only have one more shot at reviving the server. We may as well spend that doing something that has the best chance rather than going for an easier and/or quicker option.

As for the forums, it has been in a weird spot since the shift towards discord years ago. We're going to be posting progress such as teasers in discord for now, at least until we can post more consistently and also decide on how we want the forums to work going forward.

[RaZZ]

Just open the fucking server

[Equinox]

Usually the ones who beg the most often quit within the first week, so why bother. Those who actually want to play are patient.