Future of FL

[Doctor Internet]

I think we should pull all of our resources and remaining assets to League of Legends tbh, that will stop the disagreements.

hard agree, i think we should gank this thread into the midlane.

[Blaz]

i think this might be the one and only time i agree with the all mighty abodigamer.

as i have stated many times, the dying playercount due to my disappearance, the dying playercount due to me not being in staff etc etc

in all seriousness though, from a quite honest perspective as someone that peeks in on the server from every now and then, this post gives me the idea that conn is somewhat pulling a divey (in terms of activity) and of course that isnt really his fault, but its definitely a major issue to the community as the playerbase now have nobody to look up to except, oh wait! the Management Friend Group™ who are extremely biased towards eachother! AA cases are an absolute joke now, staff can abuse and players are expected to sit down and say, "oh, okay. well better roleplay my day to day life while jonathan welds a nuclear missile to pigeon!"

every time i've looked at the playercount on the server via the discord its been a dead zero, and as someone that was hyped as fuck when conn bought FL, and expected a massive revive to take place. one thing the staff team (bestest of friends) need to do is take advice from other big servers, even if they're listed as... darkrp... ???. i personally think the server is beyond revival, however the efforts that people are making to push the server (for free) to a better place and playercount are definitely appreciated by the community, somewhat.

on the more positive side, im glad to see that pollux has stayed, even if its just for his amigos and amigas, and i'm glad to see some promises (lets hope they arent broken).

see you in a year or so x

[Haarek]

I don't see the point in closing the server.

Might as well keep it open through December.

[Conn]

The purpose of a management team is to manage the server; I’m maintaining FL from a business and financial perspective, but I don’t have the time to be tuned in to every discussion about the gamemode, community, etc. anymore. I’ll still try to answer any questions I’m sent, but my scope of management is now not with the gamemode itself.

I didn’t expect to be in the position I am in now, going back 5/6 months to when I bought FL, but my career has taken off in a way I couldn’t have predicted. As a side effect of that, I’m regularly away from home, working long/late hours, inundated with meetings on days off, etc..

On the plus side, I love my job, and wouldn’t have been able to get there without experience gained from this place. The management team are capable people, there is a plan in place, they provide some of the best chances to revive the community. FL is not a simple mechanical being; there’s many complex issues at play, that a change in ownership clearly does not fix. Give the team some time.

[Doctor Internet]

Goooooooooooood Morning my lil pogchamps.
I have slept, so I'm ready to post replies, as opposed to yesterday where I just wanted to sleep or die.

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TonettaFan #2319, Nadrickk, Blaz, ART, JT2017, Yonno, Jan

If you’re not ready to announce a date, you’re not ready to put in the work.

25st of December, 2035.
We might move it up if we're ready earlier.

In all seriousness, we don't have sprints, we don't have a kaban board, we don't use Jira. We can make estimates, but that relies on having consistent development resources, which we don't have.

We've seen what happens when we commit to a fixed date, early in the process, which is what we had with the last relaunch, where we had to cut features in order to release on time, such as the updated deliveries.

By announcing a wider timeframe, as opposed to a specific date, we get the flexibility to move forward or backwards, depending on if things are ready earlier, or later. While doing that, we'll also be releasing dev blogs on feaures as they're finished, so y'all's not just left in the dark on things.

I can see why you'd believe what you say, but unfortunately, we don't have a magic developer wand we can wave, and make another 100 devs spring up out of nowhere.

I hope that explains it a bit for ya

Bit suprised Pollux announces something like this instead of Conn aswell.

Pollux, one of the members of management, who is also a dev, posting an update on development?
idk dude, seems pretty reasonable to me.

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RIC0H

While you're making changes, you could also change the way AA cases are handled.

There was an AA thread that I recall where it happened like this:

AA thread made (that was valid) > the reported staff member quit (think they said they were busy or some crap like that) > AA thread was closed due to the reported staff member no longer being staff (closed but not concluded) > *few weeks later* > staff member returns (but the AA thread does not reopen)

Do think that happened twice to the same person (reported>quit>closed>returned) and I'm not going to name them, but that person is currently a staff member today.

So maybe in future you could conclude the AA instead of just closing it, and have it so it's on their "record" in case they decide to come back in a few weeks.

Heya, so just to confirm what Pollux said, this isn't what happens anymore. If someone resigns, their report is handled in the same way as it would if they didn't. I don't think this is as clear as it could be, and we'll probably review other courthouse rules, when we review the appeal rules.

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Nadrickk

I agree with the majority of the comments here.

No high hopes for the future with this staff/management team, which neither I can support. Conn made a sudden disappearance with a busy "career" all of the sudden, and yet we're back to the show; Pollux makes all the comments while the owner is gone. Sounds familiar? Hint: It's a repeating history of the majestic Divey.

If it makes you feel better, we could make a rota of management to make posts, but I think that's just a waste of time. Pollux wrote the draft thread, management reviewed it, and then he posted it. The same thing happened for the recent SR conclusion, I wrote that, we reviewed it together, and then I posted it.

And again we're back to the "We're working on something but we can't tell what and when". Transparency boys, that's what the community needed for so long. The good old "Behind closed doors"-mystery thing doesn't work anymore.

What

• Complete re-write of the inventory system, allowing for unique item data and more inventories (such as car inventories, property inventories etc…).
  
• New player guide system, to make it easier to find out what there is to do and how to do it. Will be located in F1 menu.
  
• Entity interaction menu to make the gamemode easier for new players, menu to do things instead of having to remember 100 commands (this won't replace commands, but rather be an alternative).
  
• New weapon system, using the inventory refactor to deliver a better and more rewarding experience than before.
  
• Deco V2, with player deliveries and menus to show the status of what is going on (e.g missing materials for industries, time till next stock etc…)
  
• Taking another look at basing rules to ensure we have a nice middle ground between realistic bases and massive pink metal bases.
  
• Vehicle handling changes to re-balance all the cars, as some aren’t great right now.
  
• Client-side optimisation to minimise local performance impact from entities such as farming and weed.
  
• Much more which we aren’t quite ready to announce just yet. However, I'll give you three of mine before I'm ready; which I'm sure you'll find them enthralling.
  • Reworking the database schema, removing deprecated engines, removing unused tables, migrating to more efficient formats, better use of document storage types (json columns).
    
  • Updating backend systems, such as an update to player stats, to make it easier to write and query player statistics.
    
  • Cleaning and removing unused systems and code.
    

For mine, I could give you more details on the schema changes, but I feel like most people don't give a flying fuck about that.

When

It’s too soon for us to say an exact date, but it’ll likely be sometime early next year. We’ll be posting dev blogs showing off our progress on an irregular schedule while we’re down.

So likely Q1 2023.

Hope that clears it up for ya dude.

2 months ago you had a caring, small playerbase that would do anything for FL. constant suggestions that you shot down, and now the forums empty, just as empty as the server.

Idk dude, 4 pages of stuff here, and a bunch of stuff on the discord too.
Which is impressive, since a lot of the community negitivity comes out here.

I guess people had enough of their ideas being shut down, with a negative-minded management, that had no intention to come up with ideas themselves. It was just constantly shot down. At last members gave up, and here's the graveyard.
I hope my post dosen't break the new subjective rule. Good luck.

Heya, I posted the ideas from the OP above.

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Fultz, Nacreas, Blaz, ART

I just don't see how any of those "things we're looking at" bring any players on the server.

Inventory system allows for saving data on items. It doesn't by itself bring new players, but allows for other features which do.

Player Guides, the current learning curve for CityRP is a cliff. It feels pretty self-explainatory that reducing that curve improves player retention, which is why other servers (Monolith, iirc) also do that, along with almost every game made in the last 20 years.

Entity interaction menu, see above. Reducing the learning curve for new players improves retention.

New weapon system. Mad Cows does not feel good, especially on low tickrates. CW was better, but it is showing age and optimisation issues. Moving to a new system which is optimised, and importantly, feels good, is a good change for people who like aggressive RP. A lot of "RP-lite" gamemodes are built around bases and raiding, so having gunplay which feels good, and doesn't kill performance is important to that.

Deco V2, I'll split this in two.
1. player deliveries: Expanding the role of delivery drivers, which is a fairly popular money making role, and properly implementing a cut feature (as mentioned above, player deliveries were cut from the initial release).

2. show the status: This is a feature which lets people see more information about deco, what inputs they need to give to get a certain thing. It's not focused on new players, but improving the experience for mid-term players.

Basing rules: See weapon system.

Vehicle handling: Currently, vehicle handling is a bit shit, as Pollux said, with only speed to differentiate. While this doesn't effect new players directly, it does effect one of their longer term goals.

Client-side optimisation: self explainatory, I think.

So, while not everything is a direct focus for new players, a lot of it is, and I hope that clears it up a bit for you.

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Haarek, Nadrickk, Blaz, ART

Why close the server?

A bit of what Fultz said, but the main thing is it allows us to move fast and break things.
At the moment, to merge anything, stuff needs to be fully ready and totally complete, which can block other things from happening at the same time, ie, if they rely on the same player stats changes. Changes can be put "live", without the concern for "what if this breaks", because we're not on a daily time limit to have everything fully working and complete for 11am every day.

[Nadrickk]

The purpose of a management team is to manage the server; I’m maintaining FL from a business and financial perspective, but I don’t have the time to be tuned in to every discussion about the gamemode, community, etc. anymore. I’ll still try to answer any questions I’m sent, but my scope of management is now not with the gamemode itself.

I didn’t expect to be in the position I am in now, going back 5/6 months to when I bought FL, but my career has taken off in a way I couldn’t have predicted. As a side effect of that, I’m regularly away from home, working long/late hours, inundated with meetings on days off, etc..

On the plus side, I love my job, and wouldn’t have been able to get there without experience gained from this place. The management team are capable people, there is a plan in place, they provide some of the best chances to revive the community. FL is not a simple mechanical being; there’s many complex issues at play, that a change in ownership clearly does not fix. Give the team some time.

Which is exactly what happend to Soulripper and Divey aswell. If you already so short into your ownership realized you dont have time to be around, why don't you sell it to someone whose capable of doing so? We both know there's people dying to take over, and do it properly. What you're basically saying is you're forced to be a half-hearted owner, because of your job - Which is understandable. But you're not even half a year into your ownership and you're already admitting you're partially gone. 

Do what's best for Fearless and not your self confidence. What you're saying here is clearly you put the Management on autopilot and then you go off, just.like.Divey. Fearless is not in a state where we can afford this. We need an active, caring and engaging owner in the community. Owner is not just about development and managing the team, the community needs you too. 

If what you're doing is enough, then we wouldve had no issues with Divey or Soulripper - but we did. Because they didnt exist. Fearless is NOT in a place to be left on autopilot. Hand the keys over to someone who cares - And got the time and ressources needed to turn this sinking ship into a proper community again. 

I've tried to remain civil here, but if you think that your only job is to manage Fearless from a financial and buisness side...then we're doomed. Thats FAR from what makes a successfull owner. And that statement is worrying if we should have any hope for the future of FL, which this entire thread is about.

[Joe Joe]

-Snip-

I do have a question for you relating to your statement if you can so kindly give me your time. Is what you want a team effort or a dictatorial regime? Because your point seems to indicate you want an active Owner (which is a reasonable request), but even with an active Owner that shouldn't majorly change the outcome of decisions - unless of course that new Owner decided to sideline the entire opinion of Management. I know Conn's heart is with Fearless because he's still involved with the decisions. However, as a business, and as a management team decisions can be made without Conn, but as of current all major decisions have had Conns input and approval.

As a management team we have the benefit of something that one sole individual does not - we produce real criticised change. Do you no think that everything we've done in the past months hasn't received internal scrutiny until we've all reached what we deem the best outcome - which is a more balanced and reasonable perspective. 

Everyone has their own, what I call, "head-cannon" for what Fearless should be. But I guarantee that if you put anyone in the position Conn is in and make them Owner and tell them to just go for it, nothing would change. Maybe you'd get a few players for a few weeks but then you'd end up at square one.

Equally, the candidates I know you'd like to takeover would end up resulting in all that's left of competency resigning. I doubt any team members, including our Developers would remain under any of these deity's that seems to have the hearts of the vocal minority.

[aDisabledDeer]

Delete my Rip bozo I'll hit you with another Rip bozo

Rip bozo

[Divey]

Not commented on FL and only lurked the forums once in a blue moon, most likely if I've been notified by someone to read a particular thread but I thought I'd leave my thoughts. I thought I'd just leave and not comment again and let people get on with things but I thought maybe some people would be interested in my thoughts and opinions on the current climate. A lot of people won't respect my opinion and that's fine but I'm leaving it here for people who do.

When I first left I was impressed by the sheer amount of updates and also people who played when they came out, some were planned while I were still owner, some were not. I was a bit apprehensive of the economy rework but it seemed to have worked out alright from what I've heard and as for the acquisition of the LL gamemode that was a really good win for FL and I'm glad FL has taken on board some of LLs former members.
In terms of the somewhat negative reception of the 'rewind' so to speak with the last update, if I had stayed I would have absolutely wanted for us to go back to v2d and change the weapons back but clearly that hasn't worked.

In this latest update I am glad to see a temporary shut down, having a set start up date would be very good for hype whenever one can be available (I'm not talking ASAP like some have mentioned, I expect it to take it a few months) but in terms of the plans I am very nervous, I'm glad to see some motivation is still held in the team and I'm glad that Conn is believing in the teams vision but also I think for FL to survive it needs to go to further extremities than most would think to go beyond. Reworking certain aspects of the gamemode sounds good but, I really think the gamemode is just dead.
We entertained the idea of swapping gamemodes many times, whether it be one from scratch, or editing another one - but at this point I think we should ditch the current gamemode and swap. What to? This is the controversial part - DarkRP.

I'm not in the loop with whats going on within the team and I moved on for a reason but I really think you need to do a full swap to the DarkRP gamemode, I'm not sure if there's one standard one or different options but I think it is a must at this point.

Why do I think this? Well - nowadays, whether or not people say GMod is a dying game or not, lets just say it's not for now - no one can argue that it certainly isn't a game growing in interest. Most people who open up GMod simply play the most basic gamemodes, TTT & DarkRP, maybe prop hunt too? Although that's become popular in more mainstream games now. The reality is we do not have the playerbase to a) go far enough the server listing with a custom gamemode and b) no one really tries other gamemodes anymore anyway.

Regardless of FL, if I were to play GMod now it would only be for the gamemodes I've listed. Alongside this, in previous plans outsourcing was something mentioned - but as we all know the current GM is a mess and so I assume that is still the case. The dev team while good don't have the motivation to start big updates and finish them. Swapping to DarkRP would make it very easy to just go onto GModstore and add updates. I know this may not be extremely popular with people, but imagine FL with a steady stream of updates that don't even take that much man power to add. There would need to be balancing to still try and maintain the 'FL feel', but I think it is possible. Fearless is not built on the back of CityRP, it's built on the amazing building tools and the community itself, we don't need to stick to a awful gamemode to keep Fearless being Fearless.

This idea could be terrible, people may disagree or agree with me on this - but it's worth a shot, because what does FL have left in terms of options at this point? Moving to a different game could be an option but I think it's too late for this. Regardless of what people think I'm excited to see if anyone has anything to say about my thoughts.

Best of luck to all involved in moving forward and thank you

[Nadrickk]

User has been warned for this post. Reason: Toxicity

-Snip-

I do have a question for you relating to your statement if you can so kindly give me your time. Is what you want a team effort or a dictatorial regime? Because your point seems to indicate you want an active Owner (which is a reasonable request), but even with an active Owner that shouldn't majorly change the outcome of decisions - unless of course that new Owner decided to sideline the entire opinion of Management. I know Conn's heart is with Fearless because he's still involved with the decisions. However, as a business, and as a management team decisions can be made without Conn, but as of current all major decisions have had Conns input and approval.

As a management team we have the benefit of something that one sole individual does not - we produce real criticised change. Do you no think that everything we've done in the past months hasn't received internal scrutiny until we've all reached what we deem the best outcome - which is a more balanced and reasonable perspective. 

Everyone has their own, what I call, "head-cannon" for what Fearless should be. But I guarantee that if you put anyone in the position Conn is in and make them Owner and tell them to just go for it, nothing would change. Maybe you'd get a few players for a few weeks but then you'd end up at square one.

Equally, the candidates I know you'd like to takeover would end up resulting in all that's left of competency resigning. I doubt any team members, including our Developers would remain under any of these deity's that seems to have the hearts of the vocal minority.

If you can't tell the difference between a team effort or a dictatorial regime, and having the owner show himself, I have no idea how you can call yourself "Ruthlessly competent".....  

It's the sign value that the owner appears, and shows us that he cares too and just isnt a financial consultant, only here to receive donation money and paying for the services. I'm surprised how you try to cover for Conn's absence. 

And yet again, you show what you always do. You're saying that if theres a change in ownership, "all thats left of competency resigning". You're really driving mad brother. this is the issue that Abodigamer is talking about - Your little own friend circle who thinks you're the best and any changes would kill Fearless (It's already dead). 

Fearless died becuase Divey left the community and did nothing. Now Conn's doing the same thing. if you think you can just grab the owner role and think you're just a financial support lifeline, you're wrong. If it was that easy, Divey and Soulripper could still be around. 

I know you would resign if Conn resigned - But that dosent mean "The remaining competency" leaving....  


It's clear in this thread that i'm not the only one having issues with the team, and have no hopes for it. I really hoped Conn would be different than Divey, but I was wrong. There's a lot of people, old schoolers aswell, that would like to take over and do this way better than Conn. You can't just purchase the community and dip. The owner is supposed to be around, and lead us through tough times. Can't just run off like a scared cat...That's incompetency. Which means lack of physical or intellectual ability or qualifications. And I don't think Conn is qualified for ownership with that attitude. I'm not saying Conn should run his own dictatorship and decide everything - I haven't said that at all. What i'm saying is he should be AROUND and motivate the rest of us to be here too...If he's not around, and the signal he sends is he don't care - Why should we spend time on Fearless? 

If you really think it dosen't make a difference that the owner is around, then I'm surprised you can advertise yourself as competent.


Edit:
Divey. You put us in this situation. I don't think youre the one to come up with suggestions right now.

EditEdit: the fact you see your players as the vocal minority, really says something about you. I think you would benefit from crawling down from your throne for a little while buddyb. And as you can see - the staff teams posts are only liked by....the staff team. You dont really have the support from the community. Wonder why?