serious fl discussion ideas

[Lewwings]

Keep the faith.

[aDisabledDeer]

FL needs to make itself interesting again, make it marketable and palatable to newer players. The older players like myself who were there in the heyday aren't likely to come back, so I don't think that should be the aim, but FL needs to advertise itself as different, innovative, and accessible to new players.

How do you do this, I have no idea, but I'm sure there are a few good things the staff team can do to get the player count back up.

I think possibly the people who played FL for the roleplay part of it, and to feel like a community of people you knew, have long since moved on either with life or to other games where they can upscale that feeling; and the new, younger GMOD players are there simply for a different reason and so have no desire to play a roleplaying server.

Just my thoughts. It's sad to see something I spent 1500+ hours of my life on wither away, I'd like to help as much as I can, maybe my opinion can do that.

Edit: Maybe consider dropping the price from £8.50 for donator at a time of economic depression, energy bill hike, and cost of living crisis - you are charging more than Netflix
Also the map, revert back to V2D. Say what you want about it, it works, it's decent sized, and people know it.

[Bulldogg]

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

[Forgee]

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

Thank you Socrates

[Nadrickk]

FL needs to make itself interesting again, make it marketable and palatable to newer players. The older players like myself who were there in the heyday aren't likely to come back, so I don't think that should be the aim, but FL needs to advertise itself as different, innovative, and accessible to new players.

How do you do this, I have no idea, but I'm sure there are a few good things the staff team can do to get the player count back up.

I think possibly the people who played FL for the roleplay part of it, and to feel like a community of people you knew, have long since moved on either with life or to other games where they can upscale that feeling; and the new, younger GMOD players are there simply for a different reason and so have no desire to play a roleplaying server.

Just my thoughts. It's sad to see something I spent 1500+ hours of my life on wither away, I'd like to help as much as I can, maybe my opinion can do that.

Edit: Maybe consider dropping the price from £8.50 for donator at a time of economic depression, energy bill hike, and cost of living crisis - you are charging more than Netflix
Also the map, revert back to V2D. Say what you want about it, it works, it's decent sized, and people know it.

 According to the staff team, we don't want v2d back

[aDisabledDeer]

 According to the staff team, we don't want v2d back

Oh, my bad I didn't realise they spoke on my behalf and knew exactly what I want, how silly of me

Honestly though if they did a poll I'd put money on V2d taking the win and possibly even bringing a few people back

[Boonan]

In all fairness V2D wasn't the community favourite which is why we aren't on it - if it obtained the most votes we'd be on it but that wasn't the case.


At the end of the day using Pollux as a scapegoat for the decline in players isn't at all fair, even when I started getting back into FL again a  year and a bit ago towards the end of San Ranevo, the player count was dwindling but it came back up after the map changed to V5, followed by a few 'quality of life' improvements, vehicle upgrades, active orgs (doing all types of RP) and constant in-depth events. This was all when he'd just got dev-admin when the server was under a different leader and management team, it's not right to just point a finger at a figurehead in the community and blame all of the troubles on them. Sure there is a lot we can do to improve but it doesn't happen instantly - we'd end up getting to a reasonable solution a lot quicker if this thread was used properly, by giving constructive criticism and ideas on how to improve the quality of RP e.g. potential script people know of that could be implemented or mechanics from other servers which are in a much better place than us right now. However, for the most part that isn't really happening here, obviously there are some who are sharing their ideas which is great and its being acknowledged but from what I've seen its just people blurting out insults to others with no real supporting evidence to make their critiques valid which doesn't help anyone at all.


Another point to add, its unreasonable to expect management and the rest of the team to dedicate all their free time on Garry's Mod or Visual Studio Code etc trying stop the server dying, again its a voluntary job so let them play League for a bit to relax (I won't, the game is clapped). I don't believe the server will close nor do I want it to, we literally were able to sustain 30-36 players for several hours on a weekday after the server averaged 0 players 2 weeks prior, just by connecting and doing small things ie open stores, police checkpoints, have a working government - it just proves that players bring players. Sure, nobody wants to sit on an empty server hoping for one player to connect, wait hours for the ball to start rolling but its something we have to do until the quality of RP is improved upon, that's what the majority of the team do, if they're watching something or not doing anything that requires all of their PC's power, they'd leave Gmod open and sit on FL to get the initial ball rolling. People say it doesn't help but it does, every time the server has hit above 12 players is because Wolven has sat on the server alone whilst doing other stuff to get the ball rolling, after that spontaneous events happen or events that have already been planned but require a handful of players will commence, its a slow process, but just because some people don't have the patience to let things improve, doesn't mean everyone else should abandon FL on Garry's Mod and switch to a new game to continue FL or just let it die on Garry's Mod. Again its a long process so be patient and think before you blurt out something completely idiotic about someone or something that has zero connection to one another

[Haarek]

In all fairness V2D wasn't the community favourite which is why we aren't on it - if it obtained the most votes we'd be on it but that wasn't the case.

The "best" and "community favourite" often has no correlation on FL.
That is unfortunately the honest truth.

People say it doesn't help but it does, every time the server has hit above 12 players is because Wolven has sat on the server alone whilst doing other stuff to get the ball rolling, after that spontaneous events happen or events that have already been planned but require a handful of players will commence, its a slow process, but just because some people don't have the patience to let things improve, doesn't mean everyone else should abandon FL on Garry's Mod and switch to a new game to continue FL or just let it die on Garry's Mod. Again its a long process so be patient and think before you blurt out something completely idiotic about someone or something that has zero connection to one another

Having a map like v2d would tremendously help Wolven, and everyone else populate the server faster.

I think there's a needless stigma against v2d right now -
the map seems like a logical choice for the predicament FL is in at the moment.

It could be easier to get the ball rolling on a smaller map like v2d, as it generates more player interaction.

[Pollux]

In all fairness V2D wasn't the community favourite which is why we aren't on it - if it obtained the most votes we'd be on it but that wasn't the case.

The "best" and "community favourite" often has no correlation on FL.
That is unfortunately the honest truth.

People say it doesn't help but it does, every time the server has hit above 12 players is because Wolven has sat on the server alone whilst doing other stuff to get the ball rolling, after that spontaneous events happen or events that have already been planned but require a handful of players will commence, its a slow process, but just because some people don't have the patience to let things improve, doesn't mean everyone else should abandon FL on Garry's Mod and switch to a new game to continue FL or just let it die on Garry's Mod. Again its a long process so be patient and think before you blurt out something completely idiotic about someone or something that has zero connection to one another

Having a map like v2d would tremendously help Wolven, and everyone else populate the server faster.

I think there's a needless stigma against v2d right now -
the map seems like a logical choice for the predicament FL is in at the moment.

It could be easier to get the ball rolling on a smaller map like v2d, as it generates more player interaction.

V2D would be nice for nostalgia but it's also a very controversial map which meant it'd be very risky for us to swap to it, it also really not that small with it often feeling much bigger than V4B1 due to it not looping. Siphon has a side-by-side comparison somewhere showing that it's actually the same size if not bigger than V4B1, especially when it comes to driving distances. V4B1 was the safe pick with almost everyone voting for it which is why we went to it, it also has things such as event boxes which makes it easier for the EC team to host events on main - something which I'm sure you'll agree is very vital right now.

I do find it odd that a few of you were at first telling us to swap to V2D as it's what the community wanted, and now that we've swapped to V4B1 (as it turns out the community wanted V4B1) we're being told to ignore what the community wants and go V2D. I don't think there's any way to exactly please everyone here when it comes to the map which is why switching yet again is probably pointless, it's easier to just stay on the map everyone likes or at the very least doesn't mind. I also really do hate the focus on the map, I thought we concluded a while back that the map is just used as a scapegoat for pretty much every other issue?

We've done things for the sake of nostalgia in the past and it usually does wear off pretty quick, one thing that we were looking into was some sort of nostalgia night where we do swap to V2D and an old version of the gamemode on the event server for a bit. If we do end up giving up or once FL is a bit more stable we'll look into finishing that up as it'd be nice.

EDIT: I'd actually like to ask you something, do you genuinely believe V2D would significantly help with FLs situation? I would agree that it'd have short term nostalgia, but we'll likely be on it for a while. We've seen V2D in the past do very well for about a week before completely dying off, do you think it'll be different this time?

[ART]

In all fairness V2D wasn't the community favourite which is why we aren't on it - if it obtained the most votes we'd be on it but that wasn't the case.

The "best" and "community favourite" often has no correlation on FL.
That is unfortunately the honest truth.

People say it doesn't help but it does, every time the server has hit above 12 players is because Wolven has sat on the server alone whilst doing other stuff to get the ball rolling, after that spontaneous events happen or events that have already been planned but require a handful of players will commence, its a slow process, but just because some people don't have the patience to let things improve, doesn't mean everyone else should abandon FL on Garry's Mod and switch to a new game to continue FL or just let it die on Garry's Mod. Again its a long process so be patient and think before you blurt out something completely idiotic about someone or something that has zero connection to one another

Having a map like v2d would tremendously help Wolven, and everyone else populate the server faster.

I think there's a needless stigma against v2d right now -
the map seems like a logical choice for the predicament FL is in at the moment.

It could be easier to get the ball rolling on a smaller map like v2d, as it generates more player interaction.

V2D would be nice for nostalgia but it's also a very controversial map which meant it'd be very risky for us to swap to it, it also really not that small with it often feeling much bigger than V4B1 due to it not looping. Siphon has a side-by-side comparison somewhere showing that it's actually the same size if not bigger than V4B1, especially when it comes to driving distances. V4B1 was the safe pick with almost everyone voting for it which is why we went to it, it also has things such as event boxes which makes it easier for the EC team to host events on main - something which I'm sure you'll agree is very vital right now.

I do find it odd that a few of you were at first telling us to swap to V2D as it's what the community wanted, and now that we've swapped to V4B1 (as it turns out the community wanted V4B1) we're being told to ignore what the community wants and go V2D. I don't think there's any way to exactly please everyone here when it comes to the map which is why switching yet again is probably pointless, it's easier to just stay on the map everyone likes or at the very least doesn't mind. I also really do hate the focus on the map, I thought we concluded a while back that the map is just used as a scapegoat for pretty much every other issue?

We've done things for the sake of nostalgia in the past and it usually does wear off pretty quick, one thing that we were looking into was some sort of nostalgia night where we do swap to V2D and an old version of the gamemode on the event server for a bit. If we do end up giving up or once FL is a bit more stable we'll look into finishing that up as it'd be nice.

EDIT: I'd actually like to ask you something, do you genuinely believe V2D would significantly help with FLs situation? I would agree that it'd have short term nostalgia, but we'll likely be on it for a while. We've seen V2D in the past do very well for about a week before completely dying off, do you think it'll be different this time?

How is it a risk for you? You guys litterly lost evry active player.