What’s your thoughts on the current situation of the server?

[Tim]

I do agree with wolven, be more open with us, tell us what you are working on to help the server. All this thread has been is inputs and suggestions from us members. Let's here whats being done about this. Doing that would at least give us some reassurance. It shouldn't be a secret.

[Nadrickk]

FL has always been known for being this super cool popular server, where most things were hid behind "closed doors" and very few things were leaked from staff and the development, but that strategy dosent really work now. This thread has been members giving out ideas, and it is rather dissapointing to see that Pollux is the only one to give any response. IMO staff should give it the attempt that the FL server deserves. It's time Divey step up and shows a leader/owner is not only around when times are good. Divey seemed like a good admin back then, but currently doubting if he lives up to the "Owner"-tag.

[Rylund]

TLDR: Get rid of the rotten apples in the team, find new people for management and replace the current owner. That way the community would have more enthusiastic people in the team and hence a better shot at surviving.


I agree with people on this thread: player retention is a big problem on Fearless. When you can't keep new players on the server once they join, the server numbers will slowly dwindle as older players leave, which leaves you with an empty server. Quite a few people also mention problems such as ever-increasing content, not enough new updates, no events, etc. While I agree with these aid in the decrease of players on the server, I don't think this is where you should look to fix the current situation.

I believe the core of the problem is in the team - you as a team are only as strong as the weakest link you have. This has been a problem on Fearless for ages and every time it is fixed, history repeats itself. You have a few people who actively engage with the community, and you have people who yet have to comment on the current situation.
With this, I don't mean the Administrators, Developers, Contributors, and event managers but rather the management and the owner himself. You can't expect one or two people from management to single-handedly fix this community, they need the support of the whole management team and the OWNER.

The management team should be completely revamped, get rid of the rotten apples already, the same thing goes for the owner! If the management would consist of only enthusiastic people, then I believe the server could be brought back to its former glory. The server still has a huge potential, look at this thread as an example! You have a ton of players who probably don't play on the servers anymore, but this goes to show that you still have older players roaming the forums and potentially wanting to play on Fearless once again! In addition to this, you also have a huge amount of traffic going through the website every single day, you could easily use this to your advantage, the same thing goes for the steam group.



Nothing personal in the next section, a lot of the mentioned are great people!

Divey:
You told me that you would not let Soulripper down when he handed you this community, and you would do what you could to keep the community on its feet. How come you have just followed in Soulrippers path or even become worse than he was? You have not even engaged with any discussion on the forum in 2022 and we are 72 days into this year???


Conn:
You are not that active, but I know you actually want to fix Fearless but you've always been prevented from doing so. You ended up resigning from your position last time due to this, no clue why you returned as it seems like you are just as inactive as the people that caused your resignation.
You've not had any activity on the forums for 1½ months.

Edned:
You were one of the few people who were able to get to Divey when he became owner, you were a big part of why Fearless was thriving for some time, without you Fearless would have been dead within the first month. You are not that active anymore from what I can see, you have not posted on the forums since the start of February.

Joe Joe:
You had big visions when Divey became the owner, but like the rest of the team, you quickly realized it would be impossible due to a lack of communication from him. You ended up resigning and joining another community due to this.
It seems like you are in the same boat as Conn, you have now returned to the community and you have become one of the people you hated before, an inactive member of the management team.
You have not engaged with the community since you changed the staff punishment system unless you take vantiago incorporated posts into account.

Pollux:
You are the only person within the management who is actively engaging with the community, respect!
When you are the only active person, you are also the only person trying to make a change and will be the face of these changes, due to this you will also be the one receiving all the criticism from people.
The rest of the management team is nowhere to be seen, they are not the ones trying to change the community and hence they will not receive any criticism for their attempts, only their inactivity. Remember this when people criticize the things you do.
I see that you take criticism personally sometimes, take the criticism to you and use it to change, don't lash out at people!

Tomo:
You've been inactive forever, you are probably only in the management role because Divey is a friend of yours IRL. You should have resigned ages ago as you do nothing but pull the team motivation down. You have not engaged in the community since 13-06-2021, that is a whopping 273 days with no forum activity from you!
Just resign already and find a more enthusiastic replacement.

[Conn]

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:

1. Wipe the database, reset everyone to a default inventory and bank.
   
2. Refund all items and downscale the economy, implementing more realistic pricing for vehicles, weapons, etc. 
   
3. 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.

[L Y N C H Y]

revert kevlar, revert guns

[Flame..]

After the weapons, kevlar and healing items changed everyone dipped. 

Completely wrong and you know it, just because you didn't like it doesn't mean others didn't. There was a long term increase in players after those changes, not decrease. The current situation has nothing to do with changes that literally happened years ago now and it's just dumb to try say there's any correlation.

i think ur just a walking L lol

[RoCKy]

I am still for a completely new start with wiping everything and starting the server new with new cars, new weapons, new contraband system, etc.. Why should we play the same game twice now. I think it would be cool to have finally something brand new.

[Tim]

I am still for a completely new start with wiping everything and starting the server new with new cars, new weapons, new contraband system, etc.. Why should we play the same game twice now. I think it would be cool to have finally something brand new.

I couldn't agree more, the server been the same for 14 years, it's time to update everything. This thread is 7 pages long and full of only what people wanna see. The staff team hasn't been forthcoming with the details of what's being done if anything is being done. I think it's time we hear from them. Otherwise why are we wasting our time.

[Pollux]

I do agree with wolven, be more open with us, tell us what you are working on to help the server. All this thread has been is inputs and suggestions from us members. Let's here whats being done about this. Doing that would at least give us some reassurance. It shouldn't be a secret.

We used to and there's a good reason we stopped. Estimates are very hard to give - this is true with any software project. We can't say when things are gonna be done as we don't accurately know either, no one does. This isn't an FL thing, anyone who works with anything to do with development IRL knows what I'm talking about. This is why we never talk about when.

As to what, we don't want to give false promises. Focus shifts a lot depending on what is needed at the time and stuff can be cancelled. I'm sure some older members of the community remember a dev promising a ton of updates quite a few years back which never happened, the backlash was insane. I hate giving out promises I can't guarantee and if I say something is being worked on people will see that as a promise it is coming soon. I know some people will understand when things get cancelled or moved, but I also know the majority won't and it'll end up demotivating developers which helps no one.

We do try do something which is teasers, where when we're confident something is about to finish we'll start showing it off before it is done. It isn't perfect and leaves a lot of the community in the dark, but the truth is there is no perfect solution to this answer. What is however clear is that FL does not work with announcing things before they're almost done and I see it leading to more issues than it solves.

I have already talked to several on the team and in management over the past few days and we have created a plan on what needs to be done and when. The team is aware of what it is and are now involved in making it a reality. It's going to take time but the critical first few steps are done. I know a lot of you guys want to know what it is and want specifics, I can't give them for reasons I said above. Some of you won't like this at all but I hope a few of you understand why.

I'll reveal stuff as soon I can actually keep my promises, stuff takes time though but I'm doing it for the best of everyone. We did see a server population of 35 today due to an event. While this obviously isn't what we once had, it's a good start. I don't think anyone ever expected to go straight back to a full server anyway, we need to take it one step at a time.

[Nacreas]

This might be a long shot, but try to host a veteran/old members event. Whenever I speak to my friends that I know from Fearless or just in real life that I have played Fearless with, we always have the same conclusion: we would like to go back to the golden times. However, this can only be achieved if we go online in masses with good RPers and have some proper times just like in the old days. I know this will be difficult to achieve as most of us have gotten older and might not have the time to play for 3+ hours straight, but it can be worth a try.

Good luck, it just hurts to see that there were virtually no people online in the last month...

Going to drop my two cents here but feel free to tell me where to go, I've been back for two hours as of this post.


I think suggestions such as big updates or making a new gamemode isn't a great solution because of how long they would take.


I jumped in-game earlier today and I have not played FL properly in years. I found the gamemode enjoyable compared to other servers out there; FL is quite a nice product as a whole. Sure there are areas where things could be improved, but that's the case with everything.


Not to state the obvious here, but I don't believe this is a content related issue but rather keeping new people on the server. How could we do this? Give new players a head start by giving them free Donator status for one month. This would likely encourage people to join, play, stay and explore the gamemode. This doesn't have to be the case forever, but hypothetically this could be offered for the whole month of April or May. The more people in-game means there is more going on, meaning there is more opportunity to have a laugh. No amount of content will make you have a laugh, we have to use our own creativity for that.


I do agree with Deriptz when he mentioned about bringing back older players. We all stayed around for so long for a reason and I'm sure that I am not the only one who fancied giving FL another go.


Just wanted to add that I was very happy to see the server go back to an Evo City map. Feels more like Fearless. Further to this, smaller maps such as V2D, while not the most popular of maps, keeps players in close proximity and made the server seem busier than what it is. Perhaps that would be worth another go? Even with 30 people on V2D, it seemed lively.


One thing is for certain as well - if there is no leadership, this community will not go much further. I'm sure Divey has his reasons for not being as active, but if it's impacting the community, something needs to change.


Hopefully together we can help Fearless carry-on.