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

[Tim]

-Snip-
So they've been doing exams for 14 years straight? This is no excuse for the lack of major updates and actual development. There has to have been some time in between. They just let it ride it out instead of doing something, which shows. Not saying it's wrong to prioritize yourself over a game. But that excuse only goes so far.

Lets not blame the current team for the past 14 years of team. Come on now that logic can't even hold up. Just because we have the benefit of hindsight it doesn't mean the team say 3 years ago could have predicted where we are at currently. We are in a bad situation don't get me wrong. However, for the next few weeks, myself and many on the team will be prioritising our futures.

I see where your coming from and I understand and respect what you mean. But who is else is to blame? Especially when Pollux said y'all just let the server do its thing and wait for it to come back instead of updating and actually making changes to a severely outdated gamemode. It sure isn't the community's fault.

But equally, for example, myself and Pollux have been Management since the beginning of the year. How are we personally to blame for 13 years of prior work? That's like blaming an employee of a company for its failure in the past when they've just received a promotion.

True. However, when working for a "company" you are responsible for the company's reputation and right now FLs reputation isn't so good. You make it sound like we just got into a new year. It might be surprising but we are pretty much half way through 2022 already. So the beginning of the year was nearly 6 months ago, half a year. Which is a decent amount of time. A lot can change in 6 months, could change but it hasn't. Just like the past 14 years.

[Pollux]

I think you are forgetting that nobody here can pull magnificent changes and updates out their ass.

It takes time and work. Be patient.

Though I do agree with this in moderation, this thread was created in mid February. That's over three months ago. The amount of stuff you can get done in a week is surprising, let alone 90+ days; and that's not even taking into account that you have a whole team of people 'working' on it.

Again, not to hate on the management, but, as I always say to Grizzly, you can't expect anything from anyone unless you pay them, which is maybe where the core issue lies. After all, as they quite rightly say, they've (supposedly) got other things to do, so why should they spend their effort fixing Fearless? Passion can only go so far.

But, if it's not an issue with passion, motivation and time availability, then sadly it's competency.

It's motivation, development anyway is by far the most experienced and competent FL has ever had. Just with better developers, they also tend to want more (such as pay) and for things to run a bit smoother. Development on FL has always been very motivation and somewhat impulse based, you feel like working on x feature so you do it that day. If you have to wait for literally weeks to get things such as pay and a plan sorted, you tend to be burned out before you even start. Conn and myself have pushed hard for things to change in this regard and a lot has been promised, however we're still not even close to actual meaningful change.

We (developers) haven't done much more than basic maintenance because of this.

-Snip-
So they've been doing exams for 14 years straight? This is no excuse for the lack of major updates and actual development. There has to have been some time in between. They just let it ride it out instead of doing something, which shows. Not saying it's wrong to prioritize yourself over a game. But that excuse only goes so far.

Lets not blame the current team for the past 14 years of team. Come on now that logic can't even hold up. Just because we have the benefit of hindsight it doesn't mean the team say 3 years ago could have predicted where we are at currently. We are in a bad situation don't get me wrong. However, for the next few weeks, myself and many on the team will be prioritising our futures.

I see where your coming from and I understand and respect what you mean. But who is else is to blame? Especially when Pollux said y'all just let the server do its thing and wait for it to come back instead of updating and actually making changes to a severely outdated gamemode. It sure isn't the community's fault.

I literally said the exact opposite, I said I don't expect it to be like that at all this time. You misunderstood what I said entirely.

-Snip-
So they've been doing exams for 14 years straight? This is no excuse for the lack of major updates and actual development. There has to have been some time in between. They just let it ride it out instead of doing something, which shows. Not saying it's wrong to prioritize yourself over a game. But that excuse only goes so far.

Lets not blame the current team for the past 14 years of team. Come on now that logic can't even hold up. Just because we have the benefit of hindsight it doesn't mean the team say 3 years ago could have predicted where we are at currently. We are in a bad situation don't get me wrong. However, for the next few weeks, myself and many on the team will be prioritising our futures.

I see where your coming from and I understand and respect what you mean. But who is else is to blame? Especially when Pollux said y'all just let the server do its thing and wait for it to come back instead of updating and actually making changes to a severely outdated gamemode. It sure isn't the community's fault.

But equally, for example, myself and Pollux have been Management since the beginning of the year. How are we personally to blame for 13 years of prior work? That's like blaming an employee of a company for its failure in the past when they've just received a promotion.

True. However, when working for a "company" you are responsible for the company's reputation and right now FLs reputation isn't so good. You make it sound like we just got into a new year. It might be surprising but we are pretty much half way through 2022 already. So the beginning of the year was nearly 6 months ago, half a year. Which is a decent amount of time. A lot can change in 6 months, could change but it hasn't. Just like the past 14 years.

Mate if you want to apply for Contributor and show us how it's done, feel free to. Come learn how hard it is to make things for a gamemode that is older than some people who play it, while also doing all of your work for free, with a dumb mess of protocol to get through before doing anything meaningful. Development isn't the issue here, SoulRipper somehow standardized the idea of an owner doing 0% of the work and getting 100% of the profit. FL has never been much more than basic maintenance and a few features because of that and this is the result.

FL is in a tricky position and on top of that there's a ton of core issues that need to be resolved, sitting there with zero experience going "just change literally everything, re-write the gamemode!!" doesn't help at all. If I had some magic solution that took little effort I would've done it by now, it just doesn't exist and the motivation for getting much more done doesn't exist either from pretty much everyone. It's amazing FL has survived this long and I still have hope things may improve (I'd resign if I didn't), however no one benefits from me lying and pretending everything is fine.

[Tim]

I think you are forgetting that nobody here can pull magnificent changes and updates out their ass.

It takes time and work. Be patient.

Though I do agree with this in moderation, this thread was created in mid February. That's over three months ago. The amount of stuff you can get done in a week is surprising, let alone 90+ days; and that's not even taking into account that you have a whole team of people 'working' on it.

Again, not to hate on the management, but, as I always say to Grizzly, you can't expect anything from anyone unless you pay them, which is maybe where the core issue lies. After all, as they quite rightly say, they've (supposedly) got other things to do, so why should they spend their effort fixing Fearless? Passion can only go so far.

But, if it's not an issue with passion, motivation and time availability, then sadly it's competency.

It's motivation, development anyway is by far the most experienced and competent FL has ever had. Just with better developers, they also tend to want more (such as pay) and for things to run a bit smoother. Development on FL has always been very motivation and somewhat impulse based, you feel like working on x feature so you do it that day. If you have to wait for literally weeks to get things such as pay and a plan sorted, you tend to be burned out before you even start. Conn and myself have pushed hard for things to change in this regard and a lot has been promised, however we're still not even close to actual meaningful change.

We (developers) haven't done much more than basic maintenance because of this.

-Snip-
So they've been doing exams for 14 years straight? This is no excuse for the lack of major updates and actual development. There has to have been some time in between. They just let it ride it out instead of doing something, which shows. Not saying it's wrong to prioritize yourself over a game. But that excuse only goes so far.

Lets not blame the current team for the past 14 years of team. Come on now that logic can't even hold up. Just because we have the benefit of hindsight it doesn't mean the team say 3 years ago could have predicted where we are at currently. We are in a bad situation don't get me wrong. However, for the next few weeks, myself and many on the team will be prioritising our futures.

I see where your coming from and I understand and respect what you mean. But who is else is to blame? Especially when Pollux said y'all just let the server do its thing and wait for it to come back instead of updating and actually making changes to a severely outdated gamemode. It sure isn't the community's fault.

I literally said the exact opposite, I said I don't expect it to be like that at all this time. You misunderstood what I said entirely.

Lets not blame the current team for the past 14 years of team. Come on now that logic can't even hold up. Just because we have the benefit of hindsight it doesn't mean the team say 3 years ago could have predicted where we are at currently. We are in a bad situation don't get me wrong. However, for the next few weeks, myself and many on the team will be prioritising our futures.

I see where your coming from and I understand and respect what you mean. But who is else is to blame? Especially when Pollux said y'all just let the server do its thing and wait for it to come back instead of updating and actually making changes to a severely outdated gamemode. It sure isn't the community's fault.

But equally, for example, myself and Pollux have been Management since the beginning of the year. How are we personally to blame for 13 years of prior work? That's like blaming an employee of a company for its failure in the past when they've just received a promotion.

True. However, when working for a "company" you are responsible for the company's reputation and right now FLs reputation isn't so good. You make it sound like we just got into a new year. It might be surprising but we are pretty much half way through 2022 already. So the beginning of the year was nearly 6 months ago, half a year. Which is a decent amount of time. A lot can change in 6 months, could change but it hasn't. Just like the past 14 years.

Mate if you want to apply for Contributor and show us how it's done, feel free to. Come learn how hard it is to make things for a gamemode that is older than some people who play it, while also doing all of your work for free, with a dumb mess of protocol to get through before doing anything meaningful. Development isn't the issue here, SoulRipper somehow standardized the idea of an owner doing 0% of the work and getting 100% of the profit and nothing has changed since. FL has never been much more than basic maintenance and a few features because of that and this is the result.

FL is in a tricky position and on top of that there's a ton of core issues that need to be resolved, sitting there with zero experience going "just change literally everything, re-write the gamemode!!" doesn't help at all. If I had some magic solution that took little effort I would've done it by now, it just doesn't exist and the motivation for getting much more done doesn't exist either from pretty much everyone. It's amazing FL has survived this long and I still have hope things may improve (I'd resign if I didn't), however no one benefits from me lying and pretending everything is fine.

Soulripper has long since been out of the picture and It probably is difficult but are you tellin me it takes years to update a Garry's mod server, you make it sound like it close to impossible. Here's the thing. It's been 6 months since the beginning of the year. Since you and joe joe have been in management according to joe joe's statement. That's a decent amount of time and yet there's been no change. There's been plenty of time and plenty more to come. Money shouldn't be the leading motivator either. If this protocol is the problem change it, it's clearly flawed if it doesn't allow the server to be updated. When I say CHANGE I don't mean by the snap of a finger either, "mate". I have a good idea of how time consuming development can be, which is why 6 months a certainly enough time to have been at least some change. Exams don't last 6 months either. If you all care about the server like you say, seeing it failing should be enough motivation to save it, not just money. There are solutions and no of course they don't happen in an instant but they don't take a year or more either.

[Fultz]

Love seeing management call out the owner in a thread like this. Really showcases the current dysfunction within the team lol.

The highlights of your guys tenure so far is changing the map and demoting someone. That’s it. It’s been almost a half a year and that’s all you done. Don’t blame protocols. It’s not like they magically appeared after you got promoted to management. All I’ve seen is two people who wanted to be SA so bad that you ignored all these things you knew about prior.

Just admit what everyone already knows. You are incompetent and shouldn’t be in your position. Divey should demote your sorry asses. Especially now with you blaming him and others instead of yourselves in public threads.

[Boonan]

I think you are forgetting that nobody here can pull magnificent changes and updates out their ass.

It takes time and work. Be patient.

Though I do agree with this in moderation, this thread was created in mid February. That's over three months ago. The amount of stuff you can get done in a week is surprising, let alone 90+ days; and that's not even taking into account that you have a whole team of people 'working' on it.

Again, not to hate on the management, but, as I always say to Grizzly, you can't expect anything from anyone unless you pay them, which is maybe where the core issue lies. After all, as they quite rightly say, they've (supposedly) got other things to do, so why should they spend their effort fixing Fearless? Passion can only go so far.

But, if it's not an issue with passion, motivation and time availability, then sadly it's competency.

It's motivation, development anyway is by far the most experienced and competent FL has ever had. Just with better developers, they also tend to want more (such as pay) and for things to run a bit smoother. Development on FL has always been very motivation and somewhat impulse based, you feel like working on x feature so you do it that day. If you have to wait for literally weeks to get things such as pay and a plan sorted, you tend to be burned out before you even start. Conn and myself have pushed hard for things to change in this regard and a lot has been promised, however we're still not even close to actual meaningful change.

We (developers) haven't done much more than basic maintenance because of this.

-Snip-
So they've been doing exams for 14 years straight? This is no excuse for the lack of major updates and actual development. There has to have been some time in between. They just let it ride it out instead of doing something, which shows. Not saying it's wrong to prioritize yourself over a game. But that excuse only goes so far.

Lets not blame the current team for the past 14 years of team. Come on now that logic can't even hold up. Just because we have the benefit of hindsight it doesn't mean the team say 3 years ago could have predicted where we are at currently. We are in a bad situation don't get me wrong. However, for the next few weeks, myself and many on the team will be prioritising our futures.

I see where your coming from and I understand and respect what you mean. But who is else is to blame? Especially when Pollux said y'all just let the server do its thing and wait for it to come back instead of updating and actually making changes to a severely outdated gamemode. It sure isn't the community's fault.

I literally said the exact opposite, I said I don't expect it to be like that at all this time. You misunderstood what I said entirely.

I see where your coming from and I understand and respect what you mean. But who is else is to blame? Especially when Pollux said y'all just let the server do its thing and wait for it to come back instead of updating and actually making changes to a severely outdated gamemode. It sure isn't the community's fault.

But equally, for example, myself and Pollux have been Management since the beginning of the year. How are we personally to blame for 13 years of prior work? That's like blaming an employee of a company for its failure in the past when they've just received a promotion.

True. However, when working for a "company" you are responsible for the company's reputation and right now FLs reputation isn't so good. You make it sound like we just got into a new year. It might be surprising but we are pretty much half way through 2022 already. So the beginning of the year was nearly 6 months ago, half a year. Which is a decent amount of time. A lot can change in 6 months, could change but it hasn't. Just like the past 14 years.

Mate if you want to apply for Contributor and show us how it's done, feel free to. Come learn how hard it is to make things for a gamemode that is older than some people who play it, while also doing all of your work for free, with a dumb mess of protocol to get through before doing anything meaningful. Development isn't the issue here, SoulRipper somehow standardized the idea of an owner doing 0% of the work and getting 100% of the profit and nothing has changed since. FL has never been much more than basic maintenance and a few features because of that and this is the result.

FL is in a tricky position and on top of that there's a ton of core issues that need to be resolved, sitting there with zero experience going "just change literally everything, re-write the gamemode!!" doesn't help at all. If I had some magic solution that took little effort I would've done it by now, it just doesn't exist and the motivation for getting much more done doesn't exist either from pretty much everyone. It's amazing FL has survived this long and I still have hope things may improve (I'd resign if I didn't), however no one benefits from me lying and pretending everything is fine.

Soulripper has long since been out of the picture and It probably is difficult but are you tellin me it takes years to update a Garry's mod server, you make it sound like it close to impossible. Here's the thing. It's been 6 months since the beginning of the year. Since you and joe joe have been in management according to joe joe's statement. That's a decent amount of time and yet there's been no change. There's been plenty of time and plenty more to come. Money shouldn't be the leading motivator either. If this protocol is the problem change it, it's clearly flawed if it doesn't allow the server to be updated. When I say CHANGE I don't mean by the snap of a finger either, "mate". I have a good idea of how time consuming development can be, which is why 6 months a certainly enough time to have been at least some change. Exams don't last 6 months either. If you all care about the server like you say, seeing it failing should be enough motivation to save it, not just money. There are solutions and no of course they don't happen in an instant but they don't take a year or more either.

You say that Soul has been gone for a long time- what roughly 3 years or so, that's still 11 years of FL building up into the state its currently in and that 11 years will have a profound effect on the current state of FL and will linger for a long time, and within the 6 months both JoeJoe and Pollux have been in management a lot of things internally has changed and for the better, with that Conn has also returned from exile and is significantly more active which people used to moan when SA's were taking a beating from the community.

You say that money shouldn't be the main motivator but the things I hear about how twisted the gamemode is to work on and subsequently provide updates for is a ballache and that's coming from experienced developers (including management) who get in a mess with the gamemode frequently, so taking a significant amount of hours out of their time when things are changing in each of their lives without any compensation or reward doesn't really sound like a fair exchange. Fair enough if they were 12 years old with the experience and knowledge they currently posses then so be it- they'd have no other responsibilities and you'd expect them to prioritise working on FL with their free time but this is far from the case and is ridiculous to expect them to at this point in their lives.

Same argument can be made for admins and EC's, I'm usually very active on the server but this month I don't even think I've been on for an hour- its a mix of: revising, playing with other friends outside of FL (games included) and not wanting to sit on a server with 2 other people hoping that in a few hours time the player-count will start rolling in which isn't guaranteed to happen, and this is odd as usually there'd be like 4 admins on at any given time but to expect that now is also asking for too much, now we can't directly help as we're not developers but we give input and that then turns into a decision/plan that the majority of the team agrees with, and the ball rolls from there. Same goes to EC's you shouldn't expect them to create events for a server with 3 people on after everyone complains that RP needs to be pushed (when it is, a lot) yet nobody joins or reacts to announcements on the discord or forums when they're posted, then complains on here and the cycle repeats.

[Jan]

Development isn't the issue here, SoulRipper somehow standardized the idea of an owner doing 0% of the work and getting 100% of the profit and nothing has changed since. FL has never been much more than basic maintenance and a few features because of that and this is the result.

You should be happy that's the way things are currectly going, if it was any differend you would never ever be in the position you're currectly in. 
I think we've reached a new low where so called "management" calls out their owner in public and blame him for their own incompetence. 

Getting rid of the rotten apples within the team would be a good start. Implementing the other ideas that have been suggested but ignored over and over again would be a good second step.

[Self]

I just want to let the community know that if they don't hear from me for about a week I might have died from a brain aneurism after reading this thread and I want my inventory and wallet to be given away in a spectacular fashion

If anyone came here to read good ideas and opinions on how the community can be refreshed you should head about 20 pages back because all the recent messages are just people blaming each other for the slow decay of a strong community instead of taking a stand to change anything themselves, and that's to absolutely everyone in this thread

I find it hilarious that veteran SAs and veteran admins are sat here posting and liking negative posts as if they didn't also fuck the server up themselves

The only way we can get this server "back on track" so to speak is if the entire community works together in their own way to try and help the server and inspire and motivate others too, which I don't think will happen reading this thread. If developers are working hard on features and don't see anyone online they will work slower (especially if they don't have any other sort of encouragement like pay), admins just wont be fucked to log in if they don't see anyone online, and players and event coordinators who make an event no one turns up to will be disheartened and slowly the drive burns out. There are some serious internal problems and I think the management started working out these issues but they're sort of "stuck in the mud" when it comes to getting a solution that everyone agrees on. As the event coordinator team found out, it only takes the effort of about 4 players mid-day promoting roleplay for the server to hit an alright pop, but it has to be done daily to start having any effect which takes an insane amount of time and energy.

This really has just been a load of waffle as my written communication is shockingly bad, but what I am trying to say is that we lack the strong community we once had and its going to take everyone's effort in one way or another to see the server back where it was. The reality is no one has time for the server anymore.

The good ideas on this thread consist of:

- Media promotion of the server (I spoke about it with Conn for a bit, but at the time I was already working my ass off on events for the server and I couldn't add another job on top of what we were already doing at the time) so maybe we need a media team? Anyone really good with marketing / social media stuff?

- I'm going to get bitten for saying this but I think the developers need some sort of "are you even still alive" quota, and then a dev pay system

- I think the event coordinators are key to keeping the server alive while work goes on in the background by keeping roleplay and events active on the server

- Staff being better role models

- Rules revamp and some sort of economy revamp, BUT this should be done alongside some changes to the server such as additional content in my opinion (so that it doesn't feel like people are coming online just to grind back what they already had) such as new crafting systems or a dynamic economy or new costs to living on the server and items to purchase

- I understand that it would be insanely hard to do, but I think the management should put together some sort of document with all the ideas they have come up with and all the changes they feel need to be applied to the server and post it publicly asking for genuine and constructive criticism on each of the points, and when they post that thread, archive this bombshell. If this is done, maybe we can come together and give some useful advice

- There's more but I will just edit them into this message

I didn't make a post on this thread before because I just know I am going to get lynched

[god]

75/75 players… divey owner + Pollux Sa = 6 players + 15 afk… coincidence? I think not

[L Y N C H Y]

If we go down, then we go down together FL STAY STRONG WE MUST PULL THROUGH THESE HARD TIMES!!!!!! WE CAN DO THIS!!!!!! CITYRP MUST STAY ON GARRY MOD !!!!!!! LETS DO THE IMPOSSIBLE AND PROVE THE HATERS WRONG DIVEY AND THE AMAZING TEAM!!!!! AS FREDDIE MORECURRY ONCE SAID DONT STOP ME NOW!!!! THE ONLY WAY IS UP FL !!!!!

[gin]

75/75 players… divey owner + Pollux Sa = 6 players + 15 afk… coincidence? I think not

+support