Future of FL

[Joe Joe]

Rather than tightening the social laws and narrowing the window of acceptable tone, you should be accompanying the aesthetic & mechanical improvements that you speak of with the polar opposite of that. Create an environment akin more to 2012-13 FLRP and allow gray area, quirky, spontaneous roleplays and attitudes, so you can actually get creative personalities to stick around whilst carving their own little space in the community- otherwise there's no reason for players of all ranges of roleplaying experience to try out and continue to hop on our servers.

I agree with this.

A great example is the hate JoshZ, Dimitris etc. have gotten - that's fine.
But I don't think it warrants to remove them from the server. I think these players brought more RP dynamic than we realize.

Their doomforts, activity in the OOC and raiding made the server engaging. Truth is we have always had players like these - it's just the staff back then who were better at handling such people.

The rules have also gradually become more and more strict - just making the staff more conceited in their decision to limit these players.

Controversial opinion, I know.

I'd argue the opposite actually. Many years ago the staff were a lot stricter especially on punishment and the attitudes of the aforementioned players, and then, as the years went on we as a team agreed to act more leniently towards players in an aim to retain more of them - in hindsight this proved a bad idea.

The rules we've reimplemented are things users use to be punished for with no written rules in place. Toxicity adds nothing to the community and many valuable players have left because of mistreatment they've received from community members. If you can't play the server without being an asshole, don't play at all. It really is that simple. New players who want a unique roleplaying experience won't want to stick around if they see a toxic cesspit.