What happened to the server?

[Awestruck]

People are entitled to opinions but, please can we try not to start a flame war. Discussions should be civil

Many thanks

[MasterNoda]

I just think the gamemode itself is incredibly dull and offers nothing of value. Because the core community has just heavily lost interest in it, roleplaying, or gmod in general, there is nothing to sustain players on the server. The meta slowly shifted from people popping up stores and small events, to people just spawning in houses and farming while talking to other players like it was discord, or just going afk. Stores stopped being visited, people stopped roleplaying the jobs at all. The quality has gone down the drain and I do think it is heavily because of a community shift over time. People come and go, and what we ended up with were players who dont want to roleplay or are veterans of the community who stick around but are too burnt out to join the same gamemode that hasnt been drastically changed in its lifetime. There are many other roleplay servers in gmod that are more modern and with better gameplay. Sadly we do not have the development effort to create the gamemode we need, because that is 1) expensive and 2) requires motivation. When a lot of efforts to bring back players within our means keeps failing, it gets very demotivating.

[Rossi]

I just think the gamemode itself is incredibly dull and offers nothing of value. Because the core community has just heavily lost interest in it, roleplaying, or gmod in general, there is nothing to sustain players on the server. The meta slowly shifted from people popping up stores and small events, to people just spawning in houses and farming while talking to other players like it was discord, or just going afk. Stores stopped being visited, people stopped roleplaying the jobs at all. The quality has gone down the drain and I do think it is heavily because of a community shift over time. People come and go, and what we ended up with were players who dont want to roleplay or are veterans of the community who stick around but are too burnt out to join the same gamemode that hasnt been drastically changed in its lifetime. There are many other roleplay servers in gmod that are more modern and with better gameplay. Sadly we do not have the development effort to create the gamemode we need, because that is 1) expensive and 2) requires motivation. When a lot of efforts to bring back players within our means keeps failing, it gets very demotivating.

I would definitely agree and unfortunately, it's not just FL that has died. I always have just looked at FL and the rapid decline in role play and players, however, FL is not alone. Take a look back, FL's player base declines rapidly due to no excitement in the game mode anymore. LimeLight died just last year for roughly the same reason, and then MonolithServers, the huge, fastest growing, most popular server at the time completely falls. They barely have any players anymore and by the look on their forums, they moved away from their beautiful map back to Rockford because it was way too big for the player-base now.

It's not JUST an FL thing. These "Semi-Serious" and "SeriousRP" communities on Gmod are just dying out. They were once a very popular category, but now people would prefer to join DarkRP to mess around with friends and have a good time, easy, quick fun, rather than joining FL and having it feel like a project trying to make fun happen and player interaction. And if you really wanted something semi-serious or serious, that's what GTA 5 RP is for. You get a way bigger map, better vehicles and content for run ins with others and so on.

To further (Maybe) prove my point, there are successful, player heavy game modes still on Gmod. However, they're the game modes that you CAN'T have on GTA 5, such as StarwarsRP, 1942RP, etc. They would not fit on there and that's the reason why I believe they are still popular game modes as they're fun to mess around in. One could argue that DarkRP is still popular when there are "DarkRP" servers on GTA 5 RP as well. I think it's more of the close quarters of maps on Gmod and the lack of restricting rules so people can truly mess around and have fun. 

My conclusion is, it'd be a shame to see FL close the server, but how much longer are you going to go down this road of revival? LimeLight understood that and you think they didn't try as hard as possible to differentiate themselves from FL and try new ways to bring players when they were dying? They did, and it still didn't work out. FL has been trying for quite some time now to bring players and nothing has worked to actually MAINTAIN a player base. Either FL needs to completely drift from semi serious rp and try another category like 1942 or whatever it may be, or transfer the semi serious GM to GTA or whatever else. People aren't joining anymore to RP seriously in a regular city life game mode, so why not change the category and re do the content?  That's me spitballing ideas, they're just ideas weather you agree with them or not, I think we can all say that if FL keeps up the current road it's going down, it'll be done for good.

[Pollux]

I just think the gamemode itself is incredibly dull and offers nothing of value. Because the core community has just heavily lost interest in it, roleplaying, or gmod in general, there is nothing to sustain players on the server. The meta slowly shifted from people popping up stores and small events, to people just spawning in houses and farming while talking to other players like it was discord, or just going afk. Stores stopped being visited, people stopped roleplaying the jobs at all. The quality has gone down the drain and I do think it is heavily because of a community shift over time. People come and go, and what we ended up with were players who dont want to roleplay or are veterans of the community who stick around but are too burnt out to join the same gamemode that hasnt been drastically changed in its lifetime. There are many other roleplay servers in gmod that are more modern and with better gameplay. Sadly we do not have the development effort to create the gamemode we need, because that is 1) expensive and 2) requires motivation. When a lot of efforts to bring back players within our means keeps failing, it gets very demotivating.

Our USP over other servers has been dupe building, and when that started to die off we were left with very little. What you've said is completely true and what we've been trying to work with. The big economy update was to try and adapt to what a lot of people like to do (which is grinding) and we did see success for about a month. The only thing that ever made FL sustainable over the years was players creating unique situations which made every day different and not boring. We lacked that in our soft relaunch which resulted in the server slowly dying out.

There isn't much we can directly do to fix it, as it's a community effort in the end. We can give tools to help encourage it (such as what the EC team gets), use RPPs as a reward incentive and host our own events to kickstart things. This is what we've been doing for now.

I don't think there's much we can do to the gamemode to make FL sustainable. Sure there's stuff we can change or add which leads to a short term pop increase, but the only thing that can make it actually sustainable is those players then RPing.

We'll probably have another group of updates with the intention to provide a spike of players. It's then just about following up on that to try make it sustainable, which is a community effort in the end. There's not much more we can do apart from that and I haven't seen any ideas on how we can make FL sustainable in any of the many threads on this topic. It does feel like a lot of people are too focused on what provides the short spike (such as map changes or updates) and not what can make it actually sustainable (likely as it's a much harder issue).

[Haarek]

I agree, changing map - won't make FL sustainable.
However, it would make it more bearable - for people wanting to play FL the next month or two.

[Forgee]

I dont understand why anyone would play the server rn when half the features newly added are entirely broken, like contraband takes hours just to make your money back, the crafting system was the most half arsed bollocks I've ever seen, the dynamic economy absolutely sucks huge balls and there's never stock of anything! not that it would matter anyway because its impossible to make money!!!!!

[Fultz]

I just think the gamemode itself is incredibly dull and offers nothing of value. Because the core community has just heavily lost interest in it, roleplaying, or gmod in general, there is nothing to sustain players on the server. The meta slowly shifted from people popping up stores and small events, to people just spawning in houses and farming while talking to other players like it was discord, or just going afk. Stores stopped being visited, people stopped roleplaying the jobs at all. The quality has gone down the drain and I do think it is heavily because of a community shift over time. People come and go, and what we ended up with were players who dont want to roleplay or are veterans of the community who stick around but are too burnt out to join the same gamemode that hasnt been drastically changed in its lifetime. There are many other roleplay servers in gmod that are more modern and with better gameplay. Sadly we do not have the development effort to create the gamemode we need, because that is 1) expensive and 2) requires motivation. When a lot of efforts to bring back players within our means keeps failing, it gets very demotivating.

Our USP over other servers has been dupe building, and when that started to die off we were left with very little. What you've said is completely true and what we've been trying to work with. The big economy update was to try and adapt to what a lot of people like to do (which is grinding) and we did see success for about a month. The only thing that ever made FL sustainable over the years was players creating unique situations which made every day different and not boring. We lacked that in our soft relaunch which resulted in the server slowly dying out.

There isn't much we can directly do to fix it, as it's a community effort in the end. We can give tools to help encourage it (such as what the EC team gets), use RPPs as a reward incentive and host our own events to kickstart things. This is what we've been doing for now.

I don't think there's much we can do to the gamemode to make FL sustainable. Sure there's stuff we can change or add which leads to a short term pop increase, but the only thing that can make it actually sustainable is those players then RPing.

We'll probably have another group of updates with the intention to provide a spike of players. It's then just about following up on that to try make it sustainable, which is a community effort in the end. There's not much more we can do apart from that and I haven't seen any ideas on how we can make FL sustainable in any of the many threads on this topic. It does feel like a lot of people are too focused on what provides the short spike (such as map changes or updates) and not what can make it actually sustainable (likely as it's a much harder issue).

I love how it is never your fault. When Divey was owner you were blaming him for not doing anything and now with him gone you are putting it on the players to fix the server. Pathetic

[Nadrickk]

It more and more sounds like everyone's giving up, and now as Fultz said, blaming the players.

As you saw, there's plenty of people who want to play on FL, and had a good time. And don't give me the "Garry's mod is dying"-herptiderp talk, because as we've seen, the game is doing fine. I know FiveM definiately give some other possibillities in terms of RP.

How about you listen to the playerbase and change to v2d

[Pollux]

I just think the gamemode itself is incredibly dull and offers nothing of value. Because the core community has just heavily lost interest in it, roleplaying, or gmod in general, there is nothing to sustain players on the server. The meta slowly shifted from people popping up stores and small events, to people just spawning in houses and farming while talking to other players like it was discord, or just going afk. Stores stopped being visited, people stopped roleplaying the jobs at all. The quality has gone down the drain and I do think it is heavily because of a community shift over time. People come and go, and what we ended up with were players who dont want to roleplay or are veterans of the community who stick around but are too burnt out to join the same gamemode that hasnt been drastically changed in its lifetime. There are many other roleplay servers in gmod that are more modern and with better gameplay. Sadly we do not have the development effort to create the gamemode we need, because that is 1) expensive and 2) requires motivation. When a lot of efforts to bring back players within our means keeps failing, it gets very demotivating.

Our USP over other servers has been dupe building, and when that started to die off we were left with very little. What you've said is completely true and what we've been trying to work with. The big economy update was to try and adapt to what a lot of people like to do (which is grinding) and we did see success for about a month. The only thing that ever made FL sustainable over the years was players creating unique situations which made every day different and not boring. We lacked that in our soft relaunch which resulted in the server slowly dying out.

There isn't much we can directly do to fix it, as it's a community effort in the end. We can give tools to help encourage it (such as what the EC team gets), use RPPs as a reward incentive and host our own events to kickstart things. This is what we've been doing for now.

I don't think there's much we can do to the gamemode to make FL sustainable. Sure there's stuff we can change or add which leads to a short term pop increase, but the only thing that can make it actually sustainable is those players then RPing.

We'll probably have another group of updates with the intention to provide a spike of players. It's then just about following up on that to try make it sustainable, which is a community effort in the end. There's not much more we can do apart from that and I haven't seen any ideas on how we can make FL sustainable in any of the many threads on this topic. It does feel like a lot of people are too focused on what provides the short spike (such as map changes or updates) and not what can make it actually sustainable (likely as it's a much harder issue).

I love how it is never your fault. When Divey was owner you were blaming him for not doing anything and now with him gone you are putting it on the players to fix the server. Pathetic

I'd be surprised if anyone disagrees that it'd be a community effort to revive the servers. This does seem like bait though.

It more and more sounds like everyone's giving up, and now as Fultz said, blaming the players.

As you saw, there's plenty of people who want to play on FL, and had a good time. And don't give me the "Garry's mod is dying"-herptiderp talk, because as we've seen, the game is doing fine. I know FiveM definiately give some other possibillities in terms of RP.

How about you listen to the playerbase and change to v2d

The community voted for V4B1 and V5P. We swapped to V4B1 as V5P is quite large and V4B1 had a few more votes in favour. No other map was even close to as loved as both V4B1 and V5P was, not that the map exactly even matters.

[Dubwub]

I occasionally check this forum for old times sake so thought I'd post my two cents here.

So I played during Fearless's glory days (2011-2013) with many others who aren't here anymore and let me tell you all, Gmod RP is dead. 

You can deny it all you want, serious and semi-serious RP in Gmod is long gone. Yes the occasional HL2RP pops up or some random and poorly edited DarkRP server makes an appearance but trust me, I've owned or administrated countless amounts of serious RP servers since I quit FL almost a decade ago and nothing lasts forever, some of these communities lasted over 2 years but burned to the ground within a week. Gmod is only still alive due to the influx of Russian players over the last few years who typically play a heavily modified DarkRP framework edited to be in line with the Stalker games.

FL at one point was the pinnacle of what Gmod MP could offer away from your typical DarkRP/TTT servers. it was filled with bugs, server crashes, toxic players and even some toxic staff but my god was it fun, the staff team was pretty solid in terms of activity and competency and the balance between gameplay and RP was near perfect. Again this was when the game would see 50000+ players a day, the game is now over 20 years old from it's first patch and is very outdated, albeit still great for its time.

And I'm sorry but focusing your time and energy on "events" posted to the forums isn't going to encourage an active playerbase, as someone here said before me it just encourages players to get on when their being rewarded with RP, this gamemode is or was about the freedom to create pretty much anything you wanted as a player (within reason) whether that be clans, casinos, hotels, shops, gang hideouts.. you name it, admin funded and composed events back then were actually exciting and uncommon and usually ended up being server-wide and had worthwhile rewards like RP points.

Indeed the community took a huge hit when the Soulripper/Limelight drama emerged, but it was inevitable in my opinion. Mixing friends with business and money all in one is a recipe for disaster, one that took years to finally come to fruition but when it did.. yeah bad times indeed.

If you ask me you should just let the community die off with the little dignity it still has left, there's no shame in it. Lots of good times and memories were crafted in this community, why ruin it with pointless and meaningless attempts at recovery via map changes and admin events?

You'll never match that kind of energy and activity from back then, not now and perhaps never again, it's no ones fault, it's simply called moving on... the only hope FL and other similar communities have is a huge spike of activity in S&ndbox/Gmod 2.. which would require the whole gamemode to be made again from scratch, perhaps this is already in the works who knows, until then.. or not.