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08-24-2022, 05:30 AM
On a more serious note, there has been a lot of stuff going on.
I personally have only limited info as I do not use Steam (and thus GMod) and Discord anymore for security reasons, but the main communication probably happens over there.
I find that Discord tends to compete with Forums and In-Game comms which somewhat kills the latter. Really a shame.
I could also identify a lot of dispersion among FL services. I don't mind the Merch Shop, but there is an entire Forum for interaction and communication, Discord channels for the same and the in-game comms. The map should not spread people hindering player interaction (v5p was horrible with this. Not sure if San ranevo cuts the cake either), you have multiple servers that are online all the time, but low playercount.
Some crazy solutions to (potentially) fix this would be:
1. Get rid of Discord or limit it to announcements only. People should not check up on the Discord but the game server / forums, if they cannot play. Trying to spread the base among all 3 will cause lower average numbers consequently. You want to keep the game server for imminent short-gratification content and forums for long-term planning and informational content.
2. Check the map for its size. I cannot say mich about it bar what I can see from the top-down map view. If it has a good small size and features what you need, is fast to download and doesnt need a thousand other games to not turn it into pink hell, then keep it. You do not want map changes every other day. That kills off consistency and interest in prop building. FL's main point was stability back then, when they would never change maps for 8 years or so.
3. Limit active server time! This one is crazy, but could help two problems at the same time: Have one server only have it play the main gamemode starting from say 18:00 to 20:00 (or incase there are still a lot of people on when it drops below 5 or 10).The rest of the time, make it be the build gm. Instead of spreading your entire playerbase among 24 hours, condense it into 2 hours only. This should help fight the "game is not worth waiting 2 hours for 10 people to join" if 2 hours is what ALL players will have to join. No guarantees, but I would suspect players are more likely to join and wait a little to see what is going on, if they know there is not much time to do so. Should help kickstart the server. You obviously wanna pick a sensible time for all players (average timezone is probably CET, fuck americans). Make sure to be absolutely transparent about it, so that new players know what's going on.
4. Get rid of stupid rules. You were on a good way with the rule rewrite, but there are still a lot of rules actively preventing roleplay such as FearRP, 'FailRP', Metagaming, NLR, self-supply powergaming, etc. I will follow up with a post where I dissect each rule and why it is necessary/unnecessary. Cutting down on rules frees interaction, removes admin supervision costs and doesnt stop the RP every 3 seconds because "see you on the forums"...
5. Keep general server performance awesome! I cannot stress enough how good server performance is a must. In UX it is often talked about how things that take longer to load will turn users away from your product. A website is supposed to load in less than 3 seconds but waiting 10min for the server content is justifiable? I think not. And no, it is not my RTX 2060's or i7 9700K 5 GHz's fault if my framerate drops below 60. It is your piece of shit gamemode that is still the only one in the entire server browser that cant get their priorities straight.
That shall be it for now. Again just some input from one that does'nt even play.
I personally have only limited info as I do not use Steam (and thus GMod) and Discord anymore for security reasons, but the main communication probably happens over there.
I find that Discord tends to compete with Forums and In-Game comms which somewhat kills the latter. Really a shame.
I could also identify a lot of dispersion among FL services. I don't mind the Merch Shop, but there is an entire Forum for interaction and communication, Discord channels for the same and the in-game comms. The map should not spread people hindering player interaction (v5p was horrible with this. Not sure if San ranevo cuts the cake either), you have multiple servers that are online all the time, but low playercount.
Some crazy solutions to (potentially) fix this would be:
1. Get rid of Discord or limit it to announcements only. People should not check up on the Discord but the game server / forums, if they cannot play. Trying to spread the base among all 3 will cause lower average numbers consequently. You want to keep the game server for imminent short-gratification content and forums for long-term planning and informational content.
2. Check the map for its size. I cannot say mich about it bar what I can see from the top-down map view. If it has a good small size and features what you need, is fast to download and doesnt need a thousand other games to not turn it into pink hell, then keep it. You do not want map changes every other day. That kills off consistency and interest in prop building. FL's main point was stability back then, when they would never change maps for 8 years or so.
3. Limit active server time! This one is crazy, but could help two problems at the same time: Have one server only have it play the main gamemode starting from say 18:00 to 20:00 (or incase there are still a lot of people on when it drops below 5 or 10).The rest of the time, make it be the build gm. Instead of spreading your entire playerbase among 24 hours, condense it into 2 hours only. This should help fight the "game is not worth waiting 2 hours for 10 people to join" if 2 hours is what ALL players will have to join. No guarantees, but I would suspect players are more likely to join and wait a little to see what is going on, if they know there is not much time to do so. Should help kickstart the server. You obviously wanna pick a sensible time for all players (average timezone is probably CET, fuck americans). Make sure to be absolutely transparent about it, so that new players know what's going on.
4. Get rid of stupid rules. You were on a good way with the rule rewrite, but there are still a lot of rules actively preventing roleplay such as FearRP, 'FailRP', Metagaming, NLR, self-supply powergaming, etc. I will follow up with a post where I dissect each rule and why it is necessary/unnecessary. Cutting down on rules frees interaction, removes admin supervision costs and doesnt stop the RP every 3 seconds because "see you on the forums"...
5. Keep general server performance awesome! I cannot stress enough how good server performance is a must. In UX it is often talked about how things that take longer to load will turn users away from your product. A website is supposed to load in less than 3 seconds but waiting 10min for the server content is justifiable? I think not. And no, it is not my RTX 2060's or i7 9700K 5 GHz's fault if my framerate drops below 60. It is your piece of shit gamemode that is still the only one in the entire server browser that cant get their priorities straight.
That shall be it for now. Again just some input from one that does'nt even play.