The Pulse: Community Catch Up | 2WC 13 Nov

[Cox]

Mavis coded backdoors into the game mode.

Gotta say, I love gossip.

Stop pulling that dead horse. Let it die in peace.

I think it is completely possible to revive FL and bring it back to what it once was.

I'm not saying that FL should be put to rest, I said that from a developer's standpoint, the gamemode that is currently being dragged into a slow and painful death should be put down.

You can't do anything simple and expect the server to be what it once was, I agree throwing out updates is as useless as simply reverting the gamemode back. We aren't just trying to throw out random stuff though, we're addressing core issues that makes the server annoying to play on especially as a new player. It theortically should work, just it has required a significant amount of development which has been our current downfall.

The issue I'm having with this approach is the long and painful silence everyone is experiencing without seeing any major improvements. I know, you all have been working hard on the gamemode, and promise to have something "improved" up an running within a certain timescale. But meanwhile the community is waiting with no light at the end of the tunnel. Especially as we had something, and now we have nothing. Only a promise to hold on to.

These "pulse" posts brought nothing but misunderstanding and frustration towards people who do not understand the technical aspect of development. No one cares how many lines of code has been changed. We want to see results. Like the scarce amount of actual update posts I've seen and got excited about.

There was a possibility to keep the server running, even though for only a small amount of available playerslots. Host in-game events, promote things, and keep developing alongside. Maybe even have a beta server testing sprint features. Something.

We could've kept the server up and it is something we debated a lot, ultimately we decided it is better for the server to be down compared to sitting at 0 players (which it was at for many months before we shut it down). I would argue that if the server was still up at 0 players, there wouldn't be as many talking about missing FL or wanting to see it come back. A lot of the other issues are just due to everything taking significantly longer than expected, I don't think it is a secret that we wanted to put the server down for a few months and then relaunch with a ton of stuff. The pulse is similar, it was never meant to be a long-term thing but rather something until the next dev blog. The forums were moved to a small VM on my own server a while ago to save on cost, which means putting the server up isn't really an option. We could do smaller short tests if there's interest, but nothing long term for now.

Things have been quiet but part of it is intentional, there isn't much point in making a ton of noise until we're very sure we can hit an actual relaunch date. The unintentional part is that work has also been slow. It would suck if we generated a ton of hype just for it to slowly fizzle out due to delays and such, especially with how unpredictable FL development (mostly time) is. It might be the wrong way to do it, but I feel like staying quiet until we're basically done is the only way to avoid any further disappointment than what has already happened. The way I see it is that FL is already dead and was dead long before we took the server down. It can't really get more dead than it already is, which gives us time to do whatever we need to get done before trying to revive it. Once we're basically done, we can focus on generating hype and advertising as we'd be confident we can actually hit a date.

There are many things I would've done differently over the past year, but right now I don't see a better option for us.

I can think of a good option you give your ownership up to someone who actually wants it instead of holding onto FL that no one actually wants to play due to your fuck up for last 2 years. I’m not actually having a dig at you saying this but you generally have pushed most of the people away who actually cared for FL. I’m not just saying this is all you but your group of friends as well who went against everything that people wanted FL to develop into, you got what you wanted now you’re scratching your head wondering what to do. Instead of turning this community into what you wanted you should have thought about other people wanted because we was what kept this server alive. PolluxRP has been one big fuck up and I’m not gonna lie it’s funny to see as the man who thought he knows it all actually knows nothing.