My ideas for the gamemode

[L Y N C H Y]

As written in the news section there will be a voice meeting. It's a great idea however I don't think I'll be able to make my point, so that's why I prefer typing it out.

I've been seeing a decrease of popularity of our community and that concerns me. For that reason I've been thinking of ideas how to improve the gamemode and make it more appealing to new players. I'm only talking about the gamemode part here, not about the staff team or anything else.

Back in the days I always was very keen on the required downloadable content. For years I've limited it to around 750MB. Many people disliked my limitation because they thought: the more content, the better. I agree with that and it would be a shame to remove the content that we're now used to have. But I've been thinking about the following idea:

- Let new players only download the map and the most basic models/materials. Such as only the playermodels. New people don't want to wait half an hour or more to download all content from a server they don't know. If the new player has the basic models and materials, he can get a good impression what the server is about. A popup will display: 'Subscribe to our packages at fearlessrp.net/content to see missing stuff'.
A new player should be able to join in a couple of minutes.

Then about the performance of the gamemode. It's a nightmare in terms of FPS. The coding is not great, but certainly not the cause of the FPS problems. When CityRP started, we've had low-polygon vehicles. I remember having a great FPS and no lag at all. Now we have extremely detailed vehicles that require a lot of rendering for just one vehicle, imagine 20 of them. Nobody wants those ugly cars back, so this is my idea:

- Remove parked cars after 5 minutes. There are a lot of unused cars that are using rendering power for no reason.

Next, due to the low player count I think we should change the map back..... We need more player interaction. With 7 people online you're walking in a ghost town. Get V2D or something back. When the popularity increases, we can always put back our custom map.

Let's put our gamemode in a category with similar servers. We're too small at the moment to have our own category, which is completely invisible somewhere at the bottom. I dislike DarkRP, but we could profit from its popularity, or look for another category.

Let's lower the slots from 75 to 40. Because 25/75 looks empty but 25/40 is more than half full. It would give more confidence to new players to join. It's very easy to add slots again if needed. We've got the GM running on a dedicated server, so have full control.

Give no-clip abilities to trusted builders (limited to a certain area). So that they can build at the live server.

Final idea: When we have somehow regained popularity, let's send a mass e-mail to all people reminding them of our existence. Maybe there are people out there that would give it a try and play again. But what's even more important: tell your friends about the server, ask them to join it and give it a chance. When Fearless started it was only me and a couple of friends playing it. It's the best and only way to advertise for Fearless.

These things I think would really benefit FL. Our gamemode has so much to offer, let's not forget what a great gamemode it is. The whole team and all the players made this community running for over a decade. 

Please do not start discussions about the staff team or my activity, let's use this thread to discuss the ideas above. We've got countless of threads with that other discussion already.

All your points make me happy but also majority of people won't come back because of mates being banned I honestly think a ban wipe would help massively to regaining the server population

[Pollux]

- Let new players only download the map and the most basic models/materials. Such as only the playermodels. New people don't want to wait half an hour or more to download all content from a server they don't know. If the new player has the basic models and materials, he can get a good impression what the server is about. A popup will display: 'Subscribe to our packages at fearlessrp.net/content to see missing stuff'.
A new player should be able to join in a couple of minutes.

Could work but a lot of people won't like ugly errors everywhere when they join and then we're pretty much back to square one where they have to download all of the content and then relaunch gmod. I don't think this idea would work out great as it just adds more effort for people who don't want errors everywhere (which would be a big portion of people joining, having massive errors everywhere is a pretty good reason to just leave).

Then about the performance of the gamemode. It's a nightmare in terms of FPS. The coding is not great, but certainly not the cause of the FPS problems. When CityRP started, we've had low-polygon vehicles. I remember having a great FPS and no lag at all. Now we have extremely detailed vehicles that require a lot of rendering for just one vehicle, imagine 20 of them. Nobody wants those ugly cars back, so this is my idea:

- Remove parked cars after 5 minutes. There are a lot of unused cars that are using rendering power for no reason.

Yeah performance isn't great due to a ton of different factors. The issue is if the team was to take a break from adding content and focus completely on performance, by the time the gamemode ran well everyone would be gone from the lack of things to do on the server. It's something we should prob talk about internally as a dev meeting rather than here. I don't think removing parked cars is a good idea as it can ruin some RPs. I think it'll do more harm than good, it's best how it is atm where admins can remove unused cars if the server is lagging.

Next, due to the low player count I think we should change the map back..... We need more player interaction. With 7 people online you're walking in a ghost town. Get V2D or something back. When the popularity increases, we can always put back our custom map.

I very heavily disagree with this. The map we have right now is smaller than any other map FL has had, including V2D. We've also tried V2D what, 4 times now? After the nostalgia and new map hype runs out it's a terrible map for today's standards. I also don't think the map is an issue anyway, it's just an easy thing to blame. No matter what map we switch to, after the hype wears off it's back to the same issue of people getting bored. It's not a map issue, changing maps is more of a temporary quick fix if anything which doesn't help FL at all in the long run. 

Let's put our gamemode in a category with similar servers. We're too small at the moment to have our own category, which is completely invisible somewhere at the bottom. I dislike DarkRP, but we could profit from its popularity, or look for another category.

We're not that small to have our own category, on a full server we show up pretty close or even on the first page of gamemode results. We can also still get a full server, as shown by spikes we have after an update and from events. If we were to put ourselves into DarkRP we're fighting with thousands of servers. Due to how the gamemode listing works we may not even show up at all unless people refresh a ton due to the amount of servers in there. The gamemode listing is also a lot nicer than the individual server one.

Like here's two screenshots to compare with:




The first one is the gamemode list and the second is the DarkRP server list. I think switching to another category will bury CityRP even more. This is ignoring the fact that we're not even DarkRP in the slightest, people will join expecting a light-RP server with a familiar gamemode and we offer neither.

The community also heavily voted against this in the survey:

Give no-clip abilities to trusted builders (limited to a certain area). So that they can build at the live server.

I think giving anyone who isn't an admin no-clip on live is a bad idea. What will also determine who's a "trusted builder"?

Final idea: When we have somehow regained popularity, let's send a mass e-mail to all people reminding them of our existence. Maybe there are people out there that would give it a try and play again. But what's even more important: tell your friends about the server, ask them to join it and give it a chance. When Fearless started it was only me and a couple of friends playing it. It's the best and only way to advertise for Fearless.

That could work, I also think the steam group needs to be used a lot more for events and updates.

I'm just going to sum up what I think the issue is here, as we used to have similar things back on a HL2RP server I was part of ages ago. People join the server and wait around for something to happen, if you get the majority of the server doing this you have a ton of people connecting everyday, waiting around, getting bored eventually and then disconnecting. After this happens for a while those people will stop connecting in the first place as they're bored. The quickest solution to this is to have a group of players and staff organising things for people to do to kick start it in a way. FL didn't have a ton of players back in the day due to content, it was because players were doing things and starting roleplay themselves. The clan scene was active, you had players starting their own little roleplays all the time and others also joined in. Nowadays people are waiting around for others to start something for them. I think this is something the Teacher team was meant to solve but it hasn't done it effectively at all. If the Teacher team alongside staff can help kick start a few mini-events and such and give players something to do on the server, others may start doing their own thing too. In the end our HL2RP server did die because we started doing this way too late, but I don't think FL has reached that point yet and I do think it can still recover.

[god]

contraband/aggressiveRP overhaul

[JONATHANPOO]

-snip-

The most effective way to advertise FL is to have a Youtuber to play and record a hilarious gameplay on FL.

And since we have a very low player base, I think littletown can compensate for the lack players for now till the player base gets back to normal and switch the map to Evocity. Once we have a bigger player base with players waiting in the queue and the slots gets increased to 75, then switch to San Ranevo with the improvements that the devs made.

little town? Are you trying to kill the server once and for all or what?

Temporary solution, it forces you to interact with other players. It's not like the server reaches the 20s. Besides, I always liked little town.

Little town is terrible. It has no places to do aggressive roleplay at all. A map like V2D forces you to interact with other players while being able to do aggressive and passive roleplay.

the main issue isnt fucking aggressive jesus christ

[konsta]

-snip-

The most effective way to advertise FL is to have a Youtuber to play and record a hilarious gameplay on FL.

And since we have a very low player base, I think littletown can compensate for the lack players for now till the player base gets back to normal and switch the map to Evocity. Once we have a bigger player base with players waiting in the queue and the slots gets increased to 75, then switch to San Ranevo with the improvements that the devs made.

little town? Are you trying to kill the server once and for all or what?

Temporary solution, it forces you to interact with other players. It's not like the server reaches the 20s. Besides, I always liked little town.

Little town is terrible. It has no places to do aggressive roleplay at all. A map like V2D forces you to interact with other players while being able to do aggressive and passive roleplay.

If you think that it has no places to do aggressive rp then clearly you didn't play it. Anyone who played it would tell you the whole map was a warzone.

[ryan!]

We're not that small to have our own category, on a full server we show up pretty close or even on the first page of gamemode results. We can also still get a full server, as shown by spikes we have after an update and from events. If we were to put ourselves into DarkRP we're fighting with thousands of servers. Due to how the gamemode listing works we may not even show up at all unless people refresh a ton due to the amount of servers in there. The gamemode listing is also a lot nicer than the individual server one.

We can't keep a full server or there would be no discussion here. And your point works both ways, if we could keep a full server we would not get buried in the DarkRP category either way. 

Right now we don't show up at all. The screenshot you posted is of Russian servers. No one who is going to be looking for a server to join is going to join a Russian server who isn't Russian. If we have ~40 people and with English in the title of the server, we will be a lot more visible than with 40 people while sitting 10 scrolls down the gamemode listing. 

We are a DarkRP with more rules, stop acting like this is a huge jump. I have played on a lot of DarkRPs. We can add "semi-serious" in the title then it isn't misleading. We can have the loading screen explain the rules and how semi-serious servers work, so that people who don't want to roleplay will stop loading in.  

Give me 3 differences from Fearless to DarkRP that isn't just the rules or added content that DarkRP servers could also add. The only 2 I can think of is f1 vs f4 menus and having a gravity gun instead of hands. Help me out maybe I am a stupid idiot.

[JONATHANPOO]

We're not that small to have our own category, on a full server we show up pretty close or even on the first page of gamemode results. We can also still get a full server, as shown by spikes we have after an update and from events. If we were to put ourselves into DarkRP we're fighting with thousands of servers. Due to how the gamemode listing works we may not even show up at all unless people refresh a ton due to the amount of servers in there. The gamemode listing is also a lot nicer than the individual server one.

We can't keep a full server or there would be no discussion here. And your point works both ways, if we could keep a full server we would not get buried in the DarkRP category either way. 

Right now we don't show up at all. The screenshot you posted is of Russian servers. No one who is going to be looking for a server to join is going to join a Russian server who isn't Russian. If we have ~40 people and with English in the title of the server, we will be a lot more visible than with 40 people while sitting 10 scrolls down the gamemode listing. 

We are a DarkRP with more rules, stop acting like this is a huge jump. I have played on a lot of DarkRPs. We can add "semi-serious" in the title then it isn't misleading. We can have the loading screen explain the rules and how semi-serious servers work, so that people who don't want to roleplay will stop loading in.  

Give me 3 differences from Fearless to DarkRP that isn't just the rules or added content that DarkRP servers could also add. The only 2 I can think of is f1 vs f4 menus and having a gravity gun instead of hands. Help me out maybe I am a stupid idiot.

darkrp staff do fuck all, rdm is like a tradition, no one actually roleplays, they all build like shit, and make the server a mESS. HAPPY?

[konsta]

We're not that small to have our own category, on a full server we show up pretty close or even on the first page of gamemode results. We can also still get a full server, as shown by spikes we have after an update and from events. If we were to put ourselves into DarkRP we're fighting with thousands of servers. Due to how the gamemode listing works we may not even show up at all unless people refresh a ton due to the amount of servers in there. The gamemode listing is also a lot nicer than the individual server one.

Like here's two screenshots to compare with:
-snip-

We have nothing to lose Pollux, having an unpopular seperate gamemode where it doesn't surpass 10 players won't bring any players. Even if we have 75 players, it won't attract as much people as DarkRP with thousands of players playing. I say it's worth it, and fuck that survey, I voted no that it shouldn't merge with DarkRP category but I changed my mind. Do you purposely want to keep FL in this state? Because popularity is what attracts people. Besides, Lime Light Gaming is categorized as CityRP 2, and we're just CityRP FL, some people may find CityRP 2 as a more advanced gamemode than ours, especially when they have a larger player base than we do.

Don't forget that most DarkRP servers are shit, you advert to raid, no RP, bullshit reports and unnecessary sits, get shot for some stupid and annoyingly reason, shit features and unaesthetically content overall such as pony models and other bullshit, and of course their staff members are a joke, they're not semi serious. Once we get some darkrp players join, play for a bit and see how FL stands out from other DarkRP servers for its uniqueness, they will stay and most likely invite their darkrp friends. 
Why do you think communities like Monolith grew such a large player base? It's because they are semi serious and unique, just like FL. 

We have nothing to lose from joining a DarkRP category, there's potential and we must take advantage of it. If it doesn't work out, we can always go back to our CityRP FL category.

[Tails59]

I agree with most of the original ideas - excluding removing parked cars and slightly with your content limit idea. While parked cars are a big source of wasted processing, removing them wastes a lot of rp especially at a 5m limit. Whether a good balance of removal time against RP-not-being-ruined can be found is something that would need to be tested. I think proper benchmarking of the GM to see what other functions are putting the most stress on performance and managing the biggest culprits is definitely a good idea. DBugr is a good addon for general performance monitoring, and has some handy network graphs while FProfiler is excellent at showing which functions are being called/processed the most. A good developer could look at the data from these and optimise accordingly.

In terms of the content limiting, I agree with whoever said that people will probably leave if they join and just see a bunch of errors. A more suitable plan for this would be to group content into 2 categories, with things that new players are likely to see often in one category and downloaded first, and the rest being optional. This should be done so as to not force a massive download queue, but also give the user all the content required for a game that isnt filled with errors everywhere.

For moving the gamemode to a different cateogry, there is pros and cons for both sides of the argument. I think FL should move out of the current category, but as to what is a different story. DarkRP would attract a different type of playerbase, but at least there would be players. Another alternative is moving to the CityRP category (rather than CityRP FL). This has a handful of servers in it we could easily stand out against.

Also make Aggressive RP something fun again please.

[Kappatalist]

Little town is class tbh and v2d is a good pick as well and I think having players closer together will mean more interaction. Adding ourselves to the DarkRP category seems a good idea and any minges I'm sure can be dealt with and is not a big issue if we don't show up on the server list that is. Perhaps its best to wait and see if it really is worthwhile adding ourselves to the DarkRP section.