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

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Hey Pollux - thanks for adding to this.

I mainly just wanted to raise awareness of what the data suggests with my last post, and did cite the linear implications as unrealistic. Though I feel you raise some good points as to why linear growth was unrealistic, I still respectfully disagree with your feeling that we're not way behind where we could and should be.

It's expected that an increase in alternatives would decrease the popularity of already established solutions. But along with the increase in competition, there's been a three times increase in players, which you'd assume would significantly dampen the impact of the increase and ease of competition.

Additionally, though it may be easier to technically set up servers, it's still as difficult to create a sense of community, and retain players. So, while other independent servers may be stealing server browser clicks, I'm unconvinced that FL has much direct competition, or that the average player retention for our competition is high, and that our competition is actually 'taking players out of the pool'. This suggests a reason for the community's decline was a failure to increase retention efforts in response to increased competition, and supports your implication that FL was only popular due to the limited alternatives. However, this is, in my opinion, so, completely fixable.

Moreover, about 6 months ago, I did a deep dive into all of the popular servers FL could class as competition. For the surprisingly few competitors that I found, I feel they all either had similar problems to FL, or were categorically worse. In fact, contrary to what you suggest, despite its flaws, I felt the FL gamemode was actually better than all of those that I tried. Maybe it's the case that I didn't find the servers worth sticking around on, but it's likely that if I couldn't find them, others couldn't either.

I've refrained from commenting on what I feel could be done to bring FL into a new golden age, because honestly, most of it has already been mentioned, and now it's up to you and your team to implement it. That said, I do appreciate that you mention you've set a goal, and are working towards it, and congratulate you guys on having increased the player count, as per your chart. Let's hope that this increase continues!