[Jokhah]

Gonna follow your format with my opinions on the topic. I figure the more of us that give feedback, the closer to the best resolution we get. Origin is being intentionally left off. I have a lot of very negative things to say about that section that we can all agree have no bearing on the rest of the main points.

Playerbase activity.
It's Low to moderate most of the time I get to come on. High points maybe 50 people. The game is old, many of us have played this gamemode for more than a thousand hours. We're gonna bleed out old people who are bored and the game isn't on the tips of tongues anymore to new players are becoming a rarity. Best we can do to solve this is continue to get to the end goal of a "perfect" gm, then have people come back. Recently, a bunch of old friends and I came to this server after a long break from the game as a whole. Only thing that really kept us here are the advancements made from the original mode, so it's easy to say that the better everything is, the easier it'll be to get old players to come back and maybe stay a while.

Server stability.
Terrible most of the time. While the server itself doesn't crash very often, many errors and conflicts cause client crashes all the time, sometimes in waves. I still feel that largely this has to do with Atmos and VCmod and how they function with the game. Atmos is an FPS killer for many people. I have mine as disabled as I'm allowed and still medium fps (30range) with drops to the extreme low (10s) fps. While Atmos isn't solely responsible for the fps issue, it definitely contributes to the demands of the GM on the client. When VC was disabled, the server was generally stable. Now that its back, I have repeating script errors involving particle/exhaust that cannot be explained. I have all the content packs, dunno why this happens, but after 30+ minutes of it, going near UV lights and contra is a risky event, as for some reason it'll have to load something that bogs down my computer to full lag out for 3-10 seconds, before deciding it I'm going to crash to desktop or blink to wherever I should be and continue play.

Server Stability has contributed to the loss of more than a few players, as what is the point of coming on if you only get a random number between 1 and 120 minutes before a crash occurs. Others on Mac based OS are also having extreme issues involving gmod, and the server specifically. While these aren't all LL's fault, they are issues that still cause people to leave, and generally ruin play experience.

Staff activity.
Some are around all the time. Dev team is constantly working. Some aren't around at all. Here is the rule of thumb I try to keep myself to. So long as there are staff around to attempt to keep the place clean, no one should complain. There is nothing wrong with having a larger staff team instead of kicking the lower activity admins. I encourage the team to consider increasing over all numbers, you have plenty of players whom are great potentials for your team, with thousands of hours and near clear records.

Two major problems with staff.
1: People seem to have this idea that staff should be this that and the other. Staff are just players with the ability to remove bad apples. I don't believe they are compensated financially for their work, they catch a lot of extra stress from the community, and nearly all of them have been accused of being a badmin at one point or another, with and without evidence, by someone they had to action, or associates thereof. It's hard to expect someone to want to come on the server, when most of the players shit on them. Case in point, I averagely hear at least once a session, someone talking shit about Blackdog. Not his character, but him as a staff member. Runner up is Doctor Internet, followed by Daley. While I'm sure there is some reasoning to this, I seriously doubt it's more than personal, and usually it relates to a bad incident. As a community, we should try to stop bashing on staff, jokes aside, else we ain't gonna have staff, nor people who want to replace them.

2: Egos. Some people get into the job and are good with it. Some people feel it gives them something extra over others or that they are better in some way. Case in point, you can spot this when you see a quick call followed by "rule 5" spam. Staff should be approachable, just like teachers. They should take the time to fully explain when required and even be prepared to go over it without being annoyed all over again for clarity. Some of them get the job, go super active, then deflate to min hour to keep the job. This is because they over indulged and lost interest for various reasons.

While it's okay to have staff whom are rarely around (perhaps they have school, work, ect), but it's another thing to hang on to people you like who don't have a reason to never show up. If you feel like you just aren't going to come around for 5-6 months because Destiny 47 came out, perhaps you should formally leave the team on a good note, and rejoin the team when you have more time. Staff come and go, then return quite often.

Best thing I can say to the staff about number 2 is to try and identify which is which as it applies to your inactives and decide which option is a better call. Obviously the players don't like seeing inactive admins on the list when the server isn't being covered by staff when it needs to be. Not trying to be rude, just being honest about it.

Roleplay quality as a whole.
Largely opinion here. While I don't always see a roleplay I would call "quality," I do see them often. I can agree that 190 Main is the most popular spot, though there are a bunch that are outside of the city too. This question is entirely subjective to the users experiences. I want to say that in my experience, its not that there isn't quality roleplay, its that people aren't putting it all out on display. To counter this issue, I've started recording when I spot roleplay to make RP threads about it. Its not as "serious" as clockwork, but its not usually terribad either.

A proper clan roleplay initiative and interest.
I can't speak for any clan but the one I'm in. We're active but in a building phase. I've seen a bunch of LJS, FI, and a few other off names I can't remember. Most of the clans from the clans threads though, never seen them. See their members all the time, just never their clan activity. Its depressing to know that most of them are just stale names on a wall these days. I have a feeling the removal of clan suits might have a little to do with it, but probably not as much as I imagine it could be.

Forms of entertainment.
The way you approached this I'm indifferent on. I believe like Vauld did, that the community shouldn't have restricted itself to Gmod and would have been much better off expanding to other games. That is how communities stay alive these days. Example: I bought Rust back in the day. I played on a few random servers till I found a group of people I liked. The were mainly a milsim Arma 3 group who just were dicking off owning a Rust server. I got Arma 3 and joined that unit for a long time.

Pretty easy to say that if we had a few other games on our roster that like minded people might play, we'd have more overall community members and might see an increase in gmod playerbase.

Forum games are nothing but cheese on a board. Adding stuff like the playable piano, that kind of entertainment that is interactive and in game would be a better call.

Events.

I don't make it to events. Too many life things going on to be that dedicated to a game. There is a discussion that seems like it's trying to get ideas from people, which I think should just be a template system in the events section under a sub thread event ideas. I could contribute a ton of ideas that I just don't have the time to do myself.

Biggest issue with events. Nearly no one is there for the event itself. The REP system corrupts the roleplay, because people would rather work for those tokens, then work because they feel like it. Fact is, people need the prop max to do really impressive things, else they have to work together. Some of us are loners who don't like pre-scripted RP. Without the REP system, you have no real rewards system, with it the reason for roleplay is the points. Just watch how fast people scatter to go do something else after REPs are issued out, yet if they were never issued, those same people would continue till the last staff was gone. No reason to close an RP after the REPs are issued, because you can net more than one REP for a single event, if you just kept going you might have gotten more based on different criteria.

I have no idea of a better way to perform this task and my suggestion for having an area to submit a form with evidence for staff reviewed REP was declined by the community, so I hope someone else has an idea beyond "it's fine leave it" because having a biased system that makes players quit playing after being rewarded isn't "fine."

[Welker]

One thing I noticed when I join is I just don't know what to do, I've played for over a thousand hours now. I have just ran out of things to keep me busy and motivated on the server. If there were new updates that kept people interested, busy and in a way forced people to interact with one another, the server could generally be better. Don't get me wrong, updates like new cars are nice for the playerbase, but, they're a bit generic. If there were like an achievement system on the server, it would give something for people to work for, and at the end of it they get a reward and a badge to show off.

I think clan RP has a big impact on this. I know a huge number of players who don't get on because clan RP is dead.

Clan RP in general died when the free declaration of war was removed. Like it or not, clan wars were a huge motivator for clan politics, shows of strength and the like. Nobody wants to do politics, alliances because why would you? When you can simply deny a war declaration and you're more or less fine unless you attack the other clan first. There needs to be consequences and tension within the clans, there is none anymore. 

Along with reverting to the original general warfare rules, readding clan models would also see a more healthy growth in the clan area but this is planned as far as I am aware.

[The Captain]

One thing I noticed when I join is I just don't know what to do, I've played for over a thousand hours now. I have just ran out of things to keep me busy and motivated on the server. If there were new updates that kept people interested, busy and in a way forced people to interact with one another, the server could generally be better. Don't get me wrong, updates like new cars are nice for the playerbase, but, they're a bit generic. If there were like an achievement system on the server, it would give something for people to work for, and at the end of it they get a reward and a badge to show off.

I think clan RP has a big impact on this. I know a huge number of players who don't get on because clan RP is dead.

Clan RP in general died when the free declaration of war was removed. Like it or not, clan wars were a huge motivator for clan politics, shows of strength and the like. Nobody wants to do politics, alliances because why would you? When you can simply deny a war declaration and you're more or less fine unless you attack the other clan first. There needs to be consequences and tension within the clans, there is none anymore. 

Along with reverting to the original general warfare rules, readding clan models would also see a more healthy growth in the clan area but this is planned as far as I am aware.

This is exactly what we need for gang RP. The majority of GangRP now is a loosely connected band of criminals all setting their job title to "LGS" or something similar in order to commit any tier of crime. It's esentially "/job thug" at this point.

[bismo]

I miss the ol LL :(

i feel like some of it has to do with FL and LL not being big rivals like they used to be, so nobody really has much incentive to be better than the other. i also think LL takes itself too seriously, especially with the whole "official company" thing. a lot of the players dont really have respect for the server any more either, including me. a lot of the admins are kinda a joke and really shouldn't be here any more. the pseudo-professional BS that most of the admins have would look a lot better if they didn't act and make judgements like children when they're angry. either be professional or don't. i've had an admin blatantly break fearrp when I had a gun to their head, shit like that should never happen. i would like to do real RP on here but its really discouraging when you cant ever get REP. i quit trying years ago because it was always the tryhards and dickriders that would constantly try to talk to admins who got the REP. obviously there are exceptions, and its not as bad as it used to be, but there needs to be a better system to get recognized, maybe if you post it in the RP section, an admin can grant REPs through there. LL just isnt the same, it doesnt have that spark it used to have. fucking around is a lot more fun than passiverp right now, and i think its the staff's responsibility to figure out how they're going to make passiveRP more fun and rewarding.

[Noble]

I will say that while Limelight is an official company now the atmosphere and objectives of the community have remained the same. I've been offered full time positions at other communities for development and have turned them down every time; there is literally no other community I'd rather dedicate my time to as far as creating content. Maybe from an outwards appearance Limelight has changed some over the past nearly 3 years and my hope is that the dev blogs can help give players a better feeling as to future content. There is a ton we haven't shared yet and I can promise that the status quo is not something we're satisfied with.

I always knew there was going to be apprehensions about LL becoming a legal business, but as a business Limelight is failing. A business' primary goal is to generate a profit above all else and that certainly hasn't been a priority here. At any time I had ever felt that the primary goal of the community was to make money I can assure you I wouldn't be here. I'm here to make engaging content that I can see players enjoy, being paid for that comes second for me.

While I can't answer from an admin perspective I can say that development is doing everything we can to address some of the issues brought up here. It'll take some time to get everything out the door since most of us have IRL obligations that take up most of our time, but it will get done.

[Faustie]

Sorry for the delay in getting to this - there's been a lot to sort recently and this is one of many posts in a similar issue, really. I'll try to address a few key points here, but for the rest I recommend looking at the other thread.

Does being a company change us? A little.

So, in regards to us being a company, yes, it is quite a major change, but honestly, most of that does not bleed through to the servers or community itself. It affects the gamemode a little, but only to the extent that developers can expect pay for their work so development is now more limited based on membership income, as opposed to expecting everyone to always work for free. Otherwise, it's generally to ensure that we're running legally - we're probably one of the few gmod communities that actually pays taxes on its membership/donation income. Because we're legally required to be transparent in that department, it also means that players have a better idea of how much money is going in and out so that they can see we're not just pocketing everything and refusing to spend on development. I think it's important that everyone here has a decent idea of where their money is going (nearly all server upkeep and development right now).

That being said, I have to admit, us becoming a company does open up a few opportunities. We are taken much more seriously by hosting providers and security companies, and this has helped us quite drastically in mitigating DDoS attacks. It can honestly be quite amazing the see the improved level of support we get just due to being a legit company. It has really been a huge benefit for long-term server stability (not including optimisation). Likewise, it has given opportunities to quite a few of us - myself and Burnett have gained good jobs from experienced and references gained here, and I'm always open to write a reference for strong development team members.

As for profit.. well, as I mentioned, we don't expect our developers to work for free and as such development is limited by income. However, we're quite willing to spend a lot on developers and I really want to increase this even more in the next year. There's not really any take-home profit for anyone. None of the directors are claiming anything, and the only direct expenditures we've been making outside of servers/security is on development and the occasional bit of necessary business/legal work. But the vast majority of our money goes towards development. While we do need to consider ways to increase income (and therefore development/servers) if we look to expand and improve our gamemode, it's really important to me that we balance this carefully and that we're always offering a strong free roleplay server without major balance problems due to pay-to-win.

Playerbase

It certainly has fallen at times, but based on the stats, our player numbers have been fairly resilient. We're doing some more in-depth analysis now to see if there aren't any particular regions or areas we can tackle and improve access to, but that may take a while yet. Otherwise, we've had a major change in development focus recently to focus on topics that are brought up in suggestions, and on updates that either provide new interactive content or improved stability - you won't see us adding any new huge batches of cars for a long time now. A few, maybe, but we're looking at these now as 'final' (for now) replacements to get the versions people like best in and leave them alone for a long time.

Server stability

Ah, the big one. This really has been a huge problem. We've sorted a group of developers to tackle this issue and as our next few updates roll out we're going to be increasing the focus on this all of the time. We've already had some decent improvements, such as a 30% reduction in server-side networking, with more to come hopefully soon. We're also looking at tackling the client-side area of this by both improving code and making some necessary sacrifices in the content we serve. This is a big part of where money will be going over the next year - the current budget for our optimisation plan is £600 with a contingency of £400, but we are likely to increase this even further if it is not sufficient. It won't be an easy fix, but we're putting a lot of effort into fixing this issue.

Staff activity - Please see Enzyme's response here: https://limelightgaming.net/forums/threa...#pid216522

Roleplay quality

I tend to just develop and manage now, so I can't really speak for this unfortunately. There have been a lot of suggestions made into improving roleplay quality, and internal ones to improve what we offer on the event server and for teachers and mods to manage that. Hopefully some of these things help as they're implemented, but really I think the key thing is for us to provide an environment where players can drive the roleplay, not teachers or staff.

Clans

We do have a working group looking at development plans and implementation here. It's temporarily frozen due to a couple of issues HR and the clan officer are working through to ensure a future clan environment with less bias and drama than before, but there is a decent budget and good dev resources that will be focused on this within the coming months.

Entertainment

The stock market is being slowly worked on and aspects are likely to be tied into clans in the future, though this may change. As for the radio, there's another thread on it in which Barkles has posted some good information.

Events

I do definitely miss the events we used to have, though I'm not sure what it's looking like now, to be honest. I hope that we can provide decent support for events from a development perspective, but otherwise I believe it will be the admins, mods, teachers, and community that drive this.


I hope that answers some of your questions, Falcon. I'm really busy nowadays especially during work hours, but let me know if you want a chat at some stage if you've any more.

[Mr.Sir]

More events on custom servers please, that is something i would gladly join and motivates me and probs other players to join the normal server to rp more.