Future of FL

[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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.