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12-08-2023, 12:59 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-11-2023, 08:11 PM by Divey. Edited 15 times in total.)
I'm going to try and cover the points that have been raised since my post.
First of all, I think in regards to if there is anything to take over, I don't think there is. However, I do know that there are people actively wanting to acquire FL still which gives me hope, although I feel it is wasted at best.
In terms of this 'year of development time' that the developers have been promising (and what I've seen hopeful people speak about), the truth is anyone who is actively friends with anybody on the team right now knows that there has been a large amount of infighting within the team (what's new? And you can be pretty sure that the quickly deleted resignation threads over the last few months have been part of that) and there has been next to no development on the game mode in the last year, maybe a few weeks worth at best?
Nothing I've said has been to discredit the work that HAS been put in, as I know some Developers have personally told me about the work they have done. However in terms of the GRAND scheme of things the MAJOR stuff that people are waiting on hasn't been done and is constantly getting delayed in favor of management spending their own time on enjoying life. I'm not going to say this is a bad thing, life always comes first - but why would you purchase FL with your own money, if you're just going to shut it down for a year and not make it your priority? It's your responsibility to be upfront with the community that you are now the caretaker for. The 'recent' purchase of FL in my mind was simply serving as a self-serving ego-boost, if nothing else.
I'm not going to name names on the statements I've made so far, everyone can come to their own educated guesses - but I know people have actively wanted to work on FL and been shut down because it's not deemed 'FL' enough. While I think that may have been a fair judgement when FL was thriving, now I think ANY update from a developer who clearly cares about FLs well-being is a need right now (other than what we currently have, which is nothing but utter stagnation).
I'm surprised we haven't seen more resignations, but I can only admire those that actually want to stay and help (whether it's in vain or not and shout out to Noda for somehow avoiding demotion for what probably is 7+ years now).
In response to Haarek (as I feel it's the most direct reply out of the ones I've seen so far). In terms of what Soul envisioned, you don't know the private conversations we've had, so I think putting out a blank statement like that isn't necessarily fair.
However, I won't disagree with you in terms of other people's influences. Running a server was NOT easy, which is something Conn and I spoke about briefly after his takeover. Unfortunately, I made some decisions now that I didn't necessary want to make. Unfortunately, due to a mix of my lack of technical insight and those that I trusted being inactive, I had to promote people that I didn't necessarily get on with nor agree with, for the sake of anything actually being done at the time.
I criticize myself for a lot of my decisions as owner, I should have trusted my own vision for what I wanted FL to be. However, I was trying to keep people happy so that we didn't have our only developers step down and have FL be left with nothing. I didn't truly feel like I had the power to do what I wanted, which sounds stupid now - but at the time was a real issue.
It's easy to say now what I would have wanted to do, whether it be revert weapons, have a clear focus on aggressive-rp with the introduction of bank heists, etc - as well as being more lenient on forum moderation. But, when nobody wants to make those updates, what then? And to be clear, that's with money involved - and it doesn't help that our gamemode is awful for any external developer, nor was anyone necessarily trusting with our game mode to even entertain that idea. Even when external development was suggested, team members would argue that we should prioritize the actual team, even if they wouldn't want to work on any of the proposed updates themselves. There are a million things I could have done better in terms of communication, but it panned out the way it did and now all I can do is voice my own experience of the situation.
If I could go back, I would have sold it to either Forgee or Fultz - I went with Conn because he's someone people liked and I think he did a good job, but life got in the way and if we're looking at it from a realistic standpoint, I know Forgee was probably someone who would have financially put a lot into FL (just like he did with Jagged).
At the end of the day, everyone has their own perspective of the last few years, people will hate me, people will hate the current team. When I decided to leave FL I moved on entirely, but that doesn't mean I want FL to die - hence why I waited a year to make my original post. I wish the current team all the best in their en-devours. I don't think my post will do anything, but it was worth something rather than not saying anything.
First of all, I think in regards to if there is anything to take over, I don't think there is. However, I do know that there are people actively wanting to acquire FL still which gives me hope, although I feel it is wasted at best.
In terms of this 'year of development time' that the developers have been promising (and what I've seen hopeful people speak about), the truth is anyone who is actively friends with anybody on the team right now knows that there has been a large amount of infighting within the team (what's new? And you can be pretty sure that the quickly deleted resignation threads over the last few months have been part of that) and there has been next to no development on the game mode in the last year, maybe a few weeks worth at best?
Nothing I've said has been to discredit the work that HAS been put in, as I know some Developers have personally told me about the work they have done. However in terms of the GRAND scheme of things the MAJOR stuff that people are waiting on hasn't been done and is constantly getting delayed in favor of management spending their own time on enjoying life. I'm not going to say this is a bad thing, life always comes first - but why would you purchase FL with your own money, if you're just going to shut it down for a year and not make it your priority? It's your responsibility to be upfront with the community that you are now the caretaker for. The 'recent' purchase of FL in my mind was simply serving as a self-serving ego-boost, if nothing else.
I'm not going to name names on the statements I've made so far, everyone can come to their own educated guesses - but I know people have actively wanted to work on FL and been shut down because it's not deemed 'FL' enough. While I think that may have been a fair judgement when FL was thriving, now I think ANY update from a developer who clearly cares about FLs well-being is a need right now (other than what we currently have, which is nothing but utter stagnation).
I'm surprised we haven't seen more resignations, but I can only admire those that actually want to stay and help (whether it's in vain or not and shout out to Noda for somehow avoiding demotion for what probably is 7+ years now).
In response to Haarek (as I feel it's the most direct reply out of the ones I've seen so far). In terms of what Soul envisioned, you don't know the private conversations we've had, so I think putting out a blank statement like that isn't necessarily fair.
However, I won't disagree with you in terms of other people's influences. Running a server was NOT easy, which is something Conn and I spoke about briefly after his takeover. Unfortunately, I made some decisions now that I didn't necessary want to make. Unfortunately, due to a mix of my lack of technical insight and those that I trusted being inactive, I had to promote people that I didn't necessarily get on with nor agree with, for the sake of anything actually being done at the time.
I criticize myself for a lot of my decisions as owner, I should have trusted my own vision for what I wanted FL to be. However, I was trying to keep people happy so that we didn't have our only developers step down and have FL be left with nothing. I didn't truly feel like I had the power to do what I wanted, which sounds stupid now - but at the time was a real issue.
It's easy to say now what I would have wanted to do, whether it be revert weapons, have a clear focus on aggressive-rp with the introduction of bank heists, etc - as well as being more lenient on forum moderation. But, when nobody wants to make those updates, what then? And to be clear, that's with money involved - and it doesn't help that our gamemode is awful for any external developer, nor was anyone necessarily trusting with our game mode to even entertain that idea. Even when external development was suggested, team members would argue that we should prioritize the actual team, even if they wouldn't want to work on any of the proposed updates themselves. There are a million things I could have done better in terms of communication, but it panned out the way it did and now all I can do is voice my own experience of the situation.
If I could go back, I would have sold it to either Forgee or Fultz - I went with Conn because he's someone people liked and I think he did a good job, but life got in the way and if we're looking at it from a realistic standpoint, I know Forgee was probably someone who would have financially put a lot into FL (just like he did with Jagged).
At the end of the day, everyone has their own perspective of the last few years, people will hate me, people will hate the current team. When I decided to leave FL I moved on entirely, but that doesn't mean I want FL to die - hence why I waited a year to make my original post. I wish the current team all the best in their en-devours. I don't think my post will do anything, but it was worth something rather than not saying anything.
![[Image: f2kzlKW.png]](https://i.imgur.com/f2kzlKW.png)