[George]

It's no lie that Burnett taking a step back from development has slowed things down a bit in terms of actual updates being released. However, we still have development taking place and a lot of updates in the works. The dev team are also having to do a lot more testing before they release an update due to several issues in the past where updates were causing stability issues.

The team is aware of the lag spikes and all possible causes are being looked into. Nothing more can be said until a possible solution is found. Just remember that CityRP v2 is a gamemode with a lot of content running on a 12+ year old game.

[Night]

@Burnett I'm sorry if I was implying that. Didn't mean it to come out that way (if you were referencing me that is)

I was more implying that because you've stepped down from Development, the workload for others devs have increased thus throwing more work on top of them (ie the weekly/monthly dev posts that Force suggested) would be adding more fuel to the fire.

The developers have a fair amount of work on their plates as is, and whilst I recognise that this isn't an excuse, it is at the bare minimum a factor as to why they might be unable to do this.

[The Rock]

I do understand the players , i really do , but remember something just simple thing:

Temar - He works , when he comes home im sure he got more stuff to do then look on here , and even you guys dont see , he doesnt stop , he is always doing something , you dont see because its almost always hidden

Faustie - Man its on university and what he is doing isnt something easy , he need to focus on is life first

Vol - Same

Burnett - Got life as a normal worker always

Me? Despisate i aint a coder , every day i go work , and when i return home theres always stuff too do , for example clean my home , feed my animals , going to shop to buy food , make my dinner , wash my cloths , because i do live alone , what i want to show is , we all Dev team are aware of the issues and we work to fix them but we all do have a life , no one will work for us and get us money right? we need to do yourselfs , but dont worry , we aint gonna let you down , just let us breath and find the issues , im pretty noob when it comes coding , but i do know to do somethings , but in end we all came every day home tired of the day , sometimes tired of the people , and we want to rest , sometimes we want to play a bit to chill out

[Midget.]

I wouldn't mind having the development team spend like 2-3 months just focused on bugs? Let contributors make a few interesting things to fill the space.

[Project]

In my opinion, there isn't only 1 issue with development or limelight itself.

For example, the server has been in a unstable state the last 2 weeks now. I am not aware how many devs are on it or how many hours is put on it but as I had said the first week. It killed the server. We went back to the playerbase we had in november. At this very moment we would have 40-50 people instead of 20-25. Critical issues like that need to be rushed. But again, there is lack of communication between the staff/devs and the general public. This issue should had been addressed and we should be receiving updates on it, like the times when we were being attacked.



Development

In my eyes, we need to focus on clearing up bugs, optimizing the gamemode code further, add commands and features that promote roleplay, open up the economy, introduce something unique. I feel like now that Burnett left the development part that this will slow things even more, I am honestly hoping that something happens to jump start development again, because it seems that it's dying down right now.



Another huge issue is, inactivity. 

Part 1: Staff team. Currently 17 admins, about ~9 of them are barely on once a week if not once a month. The server is always either understaffed or the other way around with 3-4 admins on at the same time.

Part 2: Contributor Program. There has been far too few contributions and even when some are made it takes too long for them to be pushed to live. That is both bad communication and inactivity from both sides.

Part 3: Teacher Program. Again half of the team is rather active and the other half is completely dead and nowhere to be seen.



Lack of communication.

This is another issue which I addressed above, there is very little interaction between the staff team and the community. Where?

Part 1: Server issues, community has been told the same thing over two weeks now, "Devs are on it". Thats the only thing I got in 2 weeks.

Part 2: Rules. We are all well aware of common sense is something critical when considering what is FailRP or not, or what a rule forces you to do or not. There have been times after times where admins disagree on how rules should be interpreted. Also the other critical issue that people are getting banned while there is no written form of said common sense rules.

(P.S. This is in no way an attempt to rant about the staff or how the server is run, I still appreciate what is being done here, I just feel like because of the huge amount of inactive members all around limelight, it seems things could be faster if we enrolled more active players that are willing to help push limelight forward, especially positions involving developing)

(P.S. 2 I may have gone a bit off-topic, I will happily move this to another thread if need be.)

[Burnett]

@Burnett I'm sorry if I was implying that. Didn't mean it to come out that way (if you were referencing me that is)

I was more implying that because you've stepped down from Development, the workload for others devs have increased thus throwing more work on top of them (ie the weekly/monthly dev posts that Force suggested) would be adding more fuel to the fire.

The developers have a fair amount of work on their plates as is, and whilst I recognise that this isn't an excuse, it is at the bare minimum a factor as to why they might be unable to do this.

@Nightmare No need to be sorry mate. My statement wasn't directed to you. I was refering to the people that blame it all on me. Actually from things, I've read and seen myself. Sorry if I hurt you in any way - It wasn't my intention.

--------------------
OT:


I fully understand the situation and as stated, communication is the key. Now one could argue and say "Hey why didn't you come up with that when you were deving?" - The answer is simple: No time.
That was a bad mistake and because of that issue, we need to improve on communicating the dev-stuff more often. 
Rather than having a weekly report, how about a monthly report? A monthly report on dev-stuff and all that. 
Maybe combine it to a "Monthly Community Report" where we lay out the status on community matters (Dev, Sevices, Financial, Admins, Members).
Hell I would love that. Maybe we can go further and include two or three member-opinions where they would raise their concerns and the community would discuss it in "Community Input" section.

Let's work together as a community.

[Vaq]

Developers are all busy with time; contributors can't work on bugs, only produce scripts & addons for the server.

Now you understand, when there are huge bugs, contributors can't add scripts & addons. Repeat this process for months.

[Midget.]

Developers are all busy with time; contributors can't work on bugs, only produce scripts & addons for the server.

Now you understand, when there are huge bugs, contributors can't add scripts & addons. Repeat this process for months.

Well that is what I was suggesting. Developers work on the bugs and contributors work on new updates/addons for the server. Even if they small updates, at least the players are getting something through a time span of around 2-3 months so devs can work on all these bugs.

[Haamster]

Regarding which area to focus on, it would be great if we had two major focus areas among the dev/contributor teams: Debug & testing and Development:

This is the way most companies work, because there will always be bugs and things to improve, so having one or a few people who mainly work with debugging and testing would certainly create a much more reliable game mode.
The recent problems that have been happening with new additions could easily have been avoided by simply testing them for a day before releasing them. (Pepper spray anyone? Did anyone even try it out for a second before committing it?)

So yeah, I don't mean to sound angry/arrogant/rude/w/e, but I definitely think that an improved development structure would help solve a lot of the issues we've had recently, as well as trying to bring in some new devs as OP mentioned, else development will take a real slow curve ball.



Other: Just wanted to add that I think the devs are doing amazing work, and I hope that this little rant didn't come off as blaming anyone for anything, but so many people can only do so much, which is why looking into the future rather than into the past is IMO the best way to go right now.

[Faustie]

We're currently looking into the network connection issues and as the cause isn't obvious, we're doing a full fault-tree analysis. We've already tried the obvious fixes such as checking the firewall and rolling back updates since when it started, but as that isn't working we'll need to spend some more time on it to properly and methodically identify and fix the root cause.

In regards to development, while Burnett isn't doing front-end gamemode work he is focusing on our back-end services; while they aren't as noticeable to the community, they're arguably much more important to us running a stable and secure service. The other devs will primarily be focusing on optimization once the main issues are fixed, which will involve a lot of work re-coding old sections of the gamemode. This won't be easy and yes, it will slow down the release of updates. However, we've been tracking player count when updates are released and most of the time a single, larger update hitting less frequently has a better effect on player count than almost-daily small updates being pushed out. Seems to suggest that releasing too frequently means the updates aren't properly appreciated as another one takes the hype almost a day later, so we'll be moving away from this mode of release into something more carefully planned. We currently have a team of staff sifting through suggestions and identifying what needs to be changed in the gamemode; they'll be planning updates for a few months ahead once some optimization work has been done.

I hope that clears a few things up. As always, we're very interested in community input. We do have the community input sub-forum, but we might implement another way to receive more direct input. We'd welcome any suggestions on that.

[Weecow]

Bugs are important as they impact the player experience and they may discourage players to join the servers. Suggestions are additions and not as important as keeping the gamemode running smoothly. So I know fixing bugs is way more important than adding suggestions.

If both can be combined is awesome but if only one of both can be focussed on I say bugs.