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03-13-2022, 04:16 PM
Hi all,
I thought it only right that I make a comment on the thread and discuss some of the ideas that have been suggested here. Firstly, I'd like to address the elephant in the room - activity. There's no denying that the activity of the majority of management has been downright shocking, and because of that, lots has slipped under the radar, allowing it to contribute to the situation we're in today. Whether you agree or not with his position on certain aspects of the community, kudos to Pollux for holding up the fort and putting in the effort when some of us have failed to do our duty.
Thanks to everyone that has left their input on here, I've been through and noted down the vast majority, if not all of the ideas, and I'm hoping that by the end of this post, I'll have provided my opinion, suggestions, or added to the discussion for each. FL is in a dire position, but it is one that we have recovered from before - I think major change is needed to improve the state of the community and regrow.
Player Recruitment & Retention
At heart, this is the root issue. We're unable to retain players, and thus we are unable to recruit players. The recruitment of players can come from various avenues, typically we've seen most recruitment based on our position on the server browser, and we haven't engaged in any sanctioned forms of advertisement, though I'm sure that various YouTube videos/Twitch streams have had some contribution.
For the above reason, it's worth focusing on retention of users in more depth currently, I believe. To recruit players, however, the avenues suggested include TikTok, content creators, and some other forms of advertising. I've got no expertise in these areas, and will do some more research into the feasibility and traction that can be gained using these.
The Economy
There isn't really an economy currently; I don't think this is necessarily down to money packs (which are a very beneficial income stream to keep the server alive), though they do create a p2w dynamic that means the highest bidder could theoretically have everything. In reality, other income sources have diluted the economy much more than money packs in recent times, devaluing them greatly.
There are a few streams of thought to improve the situation with the economy, all of which would involve reworking the pricing of items and monetary output of the various money-making systems. It has been mentioned on here as well that the current systems aren't engaging, and disincentivise/discourage interactions with other players; mining and farming are both guilty of this, and require little to no player interaction at any stage in the process. Reworking these systems to encourage interaction would be beneficial - hopefully by doing this, more complexity and depth can be added in the process.
Some options we could take when reworking the economy are as follows:
There may be other options not mentioned above - I favour option 2 currently as it allows everyone to stay relative to their current position, whilst allowing is to reintroduce the element of challenge and grind with reworked systems that are more engaging.
We're working on some ideas for the economy, so I won't go too in depth with that, but suggestions and ideas would be great to hear, any ideas on how to rework systems, improve interaction, etc, would be great.
S&Box & Different Gamemodes
We looked at exploring S&box, and the current state of it wouldn't necessarily be compatible with what FL is - it's more of a minigame platform which doesn't really allow for the style of gamemode that we have.
We explored rewriting the gamemode, with Pollux and co working on a rework using the Helix framework. The gamemode this way would be fundamentally different, though the biggest issue with this process is the fact that there isn't the buy-in nor free time to produce a gamemode up to the same depth as the FL gamemode of current. I personally think that we're best sticking with the current gamemode and its quirks, and work around them, as we're essentially battling a lack of time and motivation, which in itself has a spiral effect, so there is limited availability to work on projects and improvements - we do need a big drive to get back to a workable state though.
The Current Gamemode
The gamemode needs work to be improved, like mentioned previously, systems need improving to encourage player interaction, and also the gamemode needs its content consolidating, helping to improve download times and simplifying content generally. We tried to do this previously, and shaved around 5GB worth of downloads (iirc), though the content is still between 7-10GB.
In addition, it can be unstable at times. Developers have taken steps in the past to improve aspects of the gamemode that are potentially causing issues, but it is an ageing gamemode which needs large amounts of refactoring over time. I believe this is a long term project still, and we should focus on the economy and systems first.
Other Bits
The Steam group is a great opportunity - we should utilise it more in conjunction with more events on the main server.
There are not many goals for long standing players, we need more money pits for people, be it customisation of vehicles, persons, etc. or more things to buy. Fixing the economy will help with providing more goals over a longer period of time, but the fact remains that once a certain point is hit, there is no incentive to play.
An economy which is dynamic and adapts to the demand of players would be cool - we need to look into this a bit more to see if it's feasible and if it would have any real benefit.
AggRP changes such as kevlar and weapons changes were controversial, liked by some and disliked by some. As Pollux mentioned previously, these didn't kill the server, but they potentially had an impact on AggRP as it was at the time. Changing back to the previous system wouldn't solve any problems here, as I'm sure the majority of people understand.
I think that covers most stuff here, though I may be mistaken. To get anywhere, we do need to pull our heads out and get on the ball.
I thought it only right that I make a comment on the thread and discuss some of the ideas that have been suggested here. Firstly, I'd like to address the elephant in the room - activity. There's no denying that the activity of the majority of management has been downright shocking, and because of that, lots has slipped under the radar, allowing it to contribute to the situation we're in today. Whether you agree or not with his position on certain aspects of the community, kudos to Pollux for holding up the fort and putting in the effort when some of us have failed to do our duty.
Thanks to everyone that has left their input on here, I've been through and noted down the vast majority, if not all of the ideas, and I'm hoping that by the end of this post, I'll have provided my opinion, suggestions, or added to the discussion for each. FL is in a dire position, but it is one that we have recovered from before - I think major change is needed to improve the state of the community and regrow.
Player Recruitment & Retention
At heart, this is the root issue. We're unable to retain players, and thus we are unable to recruit players. The recruitment of players can come from various avenues, typically we've seen most recruitment based on our position on the server browser, and we haven't engaged in any sanctioned forms of advertisement, though I'm sure that various YouTube videos/Twitch streams have had some contribution.
For the above reason, it's worth focusing on retention of users in more depth currently, I believe. To recruit players, however, the avenues suggested include TikTok, content creators, and some other forms of advertising. I've got no expertise in these areas, and will do some more research into the feasibility and traction that can be gained using these.
The Economy
There isn't really an economy currently; I don't think this is necessarily down to money packs (which are a very beneficial income stream to keep the server alive), though they do create a p2w dynamic that means the highest bidder could theoretically have everything. In reality, other income sources have diluted the economy much more than money packs in recent times, devaluing them greatly.
There are a few streams of thought to improve the situation with the economy, all of which would involve reworking the pricing of items and monetary output of the various money-making systems. It has been mentioned on here as well that the current systems aren't engaging, and disincentivise/discourage interactions with other players; mining and farming are both guilty of this, and require little to no player interaction at any stage in the process. Reworking these systems to encourage interaction would be beneficial - hopefully by doing this, more complexity and depth can be added in the process.
Some options we could take when reworking the economy are as follows:
- Wipe the database, reset everyone to a default inventory and bank.
- Refund all items and downscale the economy, implementing more realistic pricing for vehicles, weapons, etc.
- Keep all items/money, rework pricing of items and income sources.
There may be other options not mentioned above - I favour option 2 currently as it allows everyone to stay relative to their current position, whilst allowing is to reintroduce the element of challenge and grind with reworked systems that are more engaging.
We're working on some ideas for the economy, so I won't go too in depth with that, but suggestions and ideas would be great to hear, any ideas on how to rework systems, improve interaction, etc, would be great.
S&Box & Different Gamemodes
We looked at exploring S&box, and the current state of it wouldn't necessarily be compatible with what FL is - it's more of a minigame platform which doesn't really allow for the style of gamemode that we have.
We explored rewriting the gamemode, with Pollux and co working on a rework using the Helix framework. The gamemode this way would be fundamentally different, though the biggest issue with this process is the fact that there isn't the buy-in nor free time to produce a gamemode up to the same depth as the FL gamemode of current. I personally think that we're best sticking with the current gamemode and its quirks, and work around them, as we're essentially battling a lack of time and motivation, which in itself has a spiral effect, so there is limited availability to work on projects and improvements - we do need a big drive to get back to a workable state though.
The Current Gamemode
The gamemode needs work to be improved, like mentioned previously, systems need improving to encourage player interaction, and also the gamemode needs its content consolidating, helping to improve download times and simplifying content generally. We tried to do this previously, and shaved around 5GB worth of downloads (iirc), though the content is still between 7-10GB.
In addition, it can be unstable at times. Developers have taken steps in the past to improve aspects of the gamemode that are potentially causing issues, but it is an ageing gamemode which needs large amounts of refactoring over time. I believe this is a long term project still, and we should focus on the economy and systems first.
Other Bits
The Steam group is a great opportunity - we should utilise it more in conjunction with more events on the main server.
There are not many goals for long standing players, we need more money pits for people, be it customisation of vehicles, persons, etc. or more things to buy. Fixing the economy will help with providing more goals over a longer period of time, but the fact remains that once a certain point is hit, there is no incentive to play.
An economy which is dynamic and adapts to the demand of players would be cool - we need to look into this a bit more to see if it's feasible and if it would have any real benefit.
AggRP changes such as kevlar and weapons changes were controversial, liked by some and disliked by some. As Pollux mentioned previously, these didn't kill the server, but they potentially had an impact on AggRP as it was at the time. Changing back to the previous system wouldn't solve any problems here, as I'm sure the majority of people understand.
I think that covers most stuff here, though I may be mistaken. To get anywhere, we do need to pull our heads out and get on the ball.