Future of FL

[5p carrier bag]

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This would be fine if we were just interested in turning a profit, especially as DarkRP generally has a lot more that can be monetized. That's not why any of us are in the team though and isn't why Conn bought FL. Apart from covering server and dev costs, we don't really care too much about making a profit from this. For us it's about delivering a unique CityRP experience, something that FL has done for many years. If we can't deliver that unique experience, there's no point in us still being here. Swapping to the DarkRP gamemode also assumes that's an experience current FL players would want, which is unlikely.

I do want to add that we don't have to swap to actual DarkRP gamemode to be able to show up in that category. Other old and unique servers similar to us have simply moved into the category with varying levels of success, many servers in DarkRP nowadays aren't actually using the DarkRP gamemode. We'll likely explore moving into the category (especially as we have very good visibility, we show up in the server browser very quickly compared to other servers due to some backend tech we have) but we won't be swapping over the actual gamemode to become a cookie-cutter generic DarkRP server for the reasons I stated above.

Unfortunately the unique CityRP experience requires a playerbase, and that's been entirely lacking for years now, beyond a handful of dedicated serious roleplayers. The only way to deliver it in this day and age will be to tap into that DarkRP market, and hope you can shape it into something resembling CityRP in it's glory days.

Whether that be by heavily modifying DarkRP to come as close to CityRP as possible, or by renaming CityRP to appear in the listings. The first will require a lot of work to get close to CityRP and not the standard DarkRP cookie cutter donation and printer grind model. The latter will result in a lot of lost players facing a confusing learning curve on a gamemode they were not expecting. There are pros and cons to both. It's not that I want the CityRP gamemode to go and be replaced by DarkRP, DarkRP is a hellhole. But I genuinely think it's very unlikely to prove viable ever again in the current Gmod climate.

Either way though will require a heavy rethink of how proper CityRP style roleplay is enforced. The old playerbase that understands how it was supposed to work have long dispersed, and gaining a new playerbase would very quickly overwhelm any admin team, no matter how dedicated it was, with the old approaches. Cleverer and more passive ways to guide players to the right approach to RP would definitely be needed. And you'll probably need some "toys" to encourage brand new players to hang around on an unfamiliar server.

I'm not interested in a profit either, I just want a populated city to play in again.