[Ricky LaFleur]

In my short little speach I'm going to be talking about the main factors contributing to Limelight's demise.

Topic 1, The Community.
Limelight's community is split, we have 3 major categories. You have your hardcore roleplayer, Ryan, ForceGhost, Wesley etc...
You have your average roleplayer who can go by un noticed, they aren't a nuisance, they don't usually cause trouble, but still, nonetheless, have some ups and downs. Then you have the dreaded minge. These guys are either well known minges, or 0 hour CDMing firemen. The community in Limelight is bad at times, but we can't choose who plays on our servers can we. But. We can influence who stays. A new player will see the current state of the server and decide to stay and roleplay, stay and minge, or leave. And this brings me onto my next topic.

Topic 2, Server Content:
A lot of the community will agree on my point here, we're too militarised. The thing is, its a difficult topic. With good roleplay, you won't even see people with guns in hours, but with the current community, it happens too much. The community and the content work hand-in-hand. If we remove weaponry and vehicles, it could either cause people to adapt their roleplay style or just leave. And thats a sacrifice we should be willing to make. The community will play based on the items at their disposal. If someone sees that the cops have HK416's and M3 Shotguns, they're obviously going to want to "one up them". This is why you see clans (yes, I know A37 did this, and I accept full responsibilty for those 3 nights of terror) that are more powerful than the police force on a full server. The current equipment we have now, stops the point of trying to be lowkey when RPing as a criminal. If a criminal knows he can kill every cop in the server with a bunch of his buddies, hes not gonna try hide his base or his weapons, is he? This brings me back to the community. Someone made a comparison the other day about the server being like the "Rust Community". I found this very true, its almost as if every player that you don't know is just another person to raid or mug. It shouldn't be like that. Removing M249's and restricting the armored van to events and certain jobs, as well as many other weapons and vehicles, we could help reduce this problem. I know people won't like it, but people didn't like going through school and studying, but it gets them further in the end. And thats the same as what the LL community will go through. There will be a small period of time where people will be annoyed, confused, maybe angry. But in the end the community will adjust and the server will lose toxicity. Pistols and knives will become more relevant, possibly making rifles more expensive will also decrease the amount of those we see on the streets. This in turn will increase PassiveRP. Less aggressiveness means more passiveness. It happens IRL. Look what happened in Iraq when the UK and US decided to invade. They tried to make things better by storming the place with jets and tanks, but all it did was create further problems along the line, eventually causing Tony Blair to resign. Limelight is currently near the end of the war you could say, the repercussions are starting to set in. In this case I am referring to the addition of M249's and armored vans as the attack, and the community becoming worse as the fallout. Limelight has a chance of pulling out, (not sexually). Dev's have had the opportunity to remove the content they added in, but didn't after community backlash, which has further escalated the problems.

Topic 3, The Dev Team:
The dev team is excelent. They produce amazing content, but we seriously need some sort of dev manager to sort out what gets prioritised. There are some major issues we need fixed before we start adding new stuff, fixed the hook errors for example, you know when it says "Unknown Hook Error ?????" and your game crashes. Yeah. How about solving that before you decide to add a fucking tank or something to add even more errors. I'm not having a go at the dev team as I honestly think they do amazing work but the PRIORITIES. Seriously.

Topic 4, The Staff Team:
The staff team are great, always friendly, mostly proffesional and manage the server fairly well ,*pause* when they're on. Is it just me or does anyone else orgasm when you see that little yellow icon upon joining. Its truely a miracle to see it. We either need to recruit more staff (although I do understand the serious nature of choosing players) or get the staff active again. I don't know, give em 5k per sit they do or something so it actually encourages them to go on, and doesn't make them feel like they are missing out on earning while doing sits.

Topic 5, PassiveRP:
Big topic, huge. People constantly complain about the lack of passiverp. I can give you one simple reason, theres no reward. If you honestly think people come on the server to sit in a shabby restaurant made of props with no customers, then you're delusional. People join whitelisted servers like MazeRP and SantosRP for that kind of thing. People come on to have fun, and to have fun they need money and cool items. This is why we need more reward for passiverp. Adding expiration dates for food would increase passiverp GREATLY. Adding perks for things like coffee and weed (eg stamina boost, faster sprint, more health etc in exchange for cons like blurry vision) would greatly increase Coffee Shop and Dispensary RP. Couple this with expiration dates would increase the flow of customers dramatically. My next point ties with the more active staff. REP. The second most valuable currency. People want that sweet juicy REP so they can buy new outfits, but people won't rp if they know they're not gonna get REP. I understand you've said that you mustn't rp for REP, but its the main driving force for it. Increasing staff numbers or activity will in turn increase the number of people PassiveRPing, knowing they're being watched by staff who hold the power to that digital gold. We should also focus on increasing the impact of a death. This could be by making the respawn time longer, or by introducing new in game punishments for dying like losing the outfit you're wearing. This is what will increase PassiveRP more than anything else mentioned.

[Taylor]

1: I’m fairly certain both me and Wesley are considering leaving, and id say the same for Force if it wasn’t for fumuku or his teacher position.

2: Yes, add a gun crafting system, collecting metals and wood to build guns.

3: Doc and Faustie are dev management, and as noble has said in the past we need better devs and more of them, do you think Santos got to where it is with 6 GLua Developers over time?

4: Offering money doesn’t work, it’s been tried before. Nacreas and Barkles have both been staff since at least early 2015 and thus are losing motivation, same for Enzyme and Faustie

[Soviethooves]

Gain active leadership who actually communicates with the members instead of sitting by staff members who should be replaced or pushed to actually do their roles.

[Taylor]

Gain active leadership who actually communicates with the members instead of sitting by staff members who should be replaced or pushed to actually do their roles.

Make someone like 26 or Daley HR?

[Soviethooves]

Gain active leadership who actually communicates with the members instead of sitting by staff members who should be replaced or pushed to actually do their roles.

Make someone like 26 or Daley HR?

Daley no, 26 yes.

I don’t know Daley from only what I’ve seen before and after my demotion. Honestly the clan fight was a stretch and the manipulation in that sitution was sad to see no one get punished for. This and lacking in positions have pushed my opinion of him to the limit.

26 so far (including his sometime asshole attitude) knows when to switch on and off serious mode. He holds his shit and knows when to cut someone some slack. He’s focused on the player, not the rules. Anyone that takes rules over RP or fair fun is a terrible community member.

[Taylor]

Gain active leadership who actually communicates with the members instead of sitting by staff members who should be replaced or pushed to actually do their roles.

Make someone like 26 or Daley HR?

Daley no, 26 yes.

I don’t know Daley from only what I’ve seen before and after my demotion. Honestly the clan fight was a stretch and the manipulation in that sitution was sad to see no one get punished for. This and lacking in positions have pushed my opinion of him to the limit.

26 so far (including his sometime asshole attitude) knows when to switch on and off serious mode. He holds his shit and knows when to cut someone some slack. He’s focused on the player, not the rules. Anyone that takes rules over RP or fair fun is a terrible community member.

I’ve been given a blacklist for taking RP over rules reeee

And Daley sure idk what happened behind the scenes but he actually knows how to fix LL and would’ve been a candidate when Brynn resigned had he not been on holiday

[Doctor Internet]

In my short little speach I'm going to be talking about the main factors contributing to Limelight's demise.

Demise is a scary word, but let's humour you.

Topic 1, The Community.
Limelight's community is split, we have 3 major categories. You have your hardcore roleplayer, Ryan, ForceGhost, Wesley etc...
You have your average roleplayer who can go by un noticed, they aren't a nuisance, they don't usually cause trouble, but still, nonetheless, have some ups and downs. Then you have the dreaded minge. These guys are either well known minges, or 0 hour CDMing firemen. The community in Limelight is bad at times, but we can't choose who plays on our servers can we. But. We can influence who stays. A new player will see the current state of the server and decide to stay and roleplay, stay and minge, or leave. And this brings me onto my next topic.

Agreed here. There is a wide range of RP style and ability on the server. We can try and improve quality of RP. The only issue with that is when we tried it last time, we got a large pushback from the community, stating that they wanted RP freedom over anything else. It's a difficult balancing act between RP freedom, rules enforcement, RP quality, passive vs aggressive RP. That being said, myself, @CMR99 and quite a few others actually come from serious RP backgrounds (her from Star Wars RP?, myself from HL2RP).

The largest problem, serious RP servers are reducing in popularity. Whilst I'd love to go back to serious RP, I don't think LL would survive going to serious RP. Whilst it would get rid of most minges, quite a few minges actually become good players, and I wouldn't want to kick out those people.

Topic 2, Server Content:
A lot of the community will agree on my point here, we're too militarised. The thing is, its a difficult topic. With good roleplay, you won't even see people with guns in hours, but with the current community, it happens too much. The community and the content work hand-in-hand. If we remove weaponry and vehicles, it could either cause people to adapt their roleplay style or just leave. And thats a sacrifice we should be willing to make. The community will play based on the items at their disposal. If someone sees that the cops have HK416's and M3 Shotguns, they're obviously going to want to "one up them". This is why you see clans (yes, I know A37 did this, and I accept full responsibilty for those 3 nights of terror) that are more powerful than the police force on a full server.The current equipment we have now, stops the point of trying to be lowkey when RPing as a criminal. If a criminal knows he can kill every cop in the server with a bunch of his buddies, hes not gonna try hide his base or his weapons, is he?

Forgive me here. You're saying the solution to gangs constantly out-gunning Police, is to reduce the power of the Police? That seems counter-intuitive at best.

Moving onto your point that the police being militarised is causing the issues with excessive aggressive RP. I have to disagree with that. I was on another community before this one, and have racked up 2000 hours, and have been playing since before the Fish Market crash. The issues we're having now are exactly the same as the issues we were having before. Players would arm up with AKs and Galils, because the Galil had a no-recoil bug, and the AK was stupidly powerful. Cops would have a USP. Doesn't matter what happened, the police were always out-gunned and mowed down repeatedly. Either that, or they'd build a base at UM, and use the catwalk and walls as sniping positions, and gun down the cops with one-taps with AWMs. That was 6 years ago, across two communities, and is the same situation which is happening now, except now the Police have a fighting chance of not dying.

This brings me back to the community. Someone made a comparison the other day about the server being like the "Rust Community". I found this very true, its almost as if every player that you don't know is just another person to raid or mug. It shouldn't be like that.

It's not like that for most people. Most people involve themselves in passive RP, and thus see the interactions between players as being greater than just "mug target #5316".

Removing M249's and restricting the armored van to events and certain jobs, as well as many other weapons and vehicles, we could help reduce this problem. I know people won't like it, but people didn't like going through school and studying, but it gets them further in the end. And thats the same as what the LL community will go through. There will be a small period of time where people will be annoyed, confused, maybe angry.

The issue again, is that a large portion of the community enjoys aggressive RP. Yeah, it may be worth it in the future, but is it worth the hit to a large part of our community? Not also that, but what about the passive RPs involving weapons? Gun ranges, stores, firearms training and such. That's not even including the clans which use weapons as part of their day-to-day operations.

But in the end the community will adjust and the server will lose toxicity. Pistols and knives will become more relevant, possibly making rifles more expensive will also decrease the amount of those we see on the streets. This in turn will increase PassiveRP. Less aggressiveness means more passiveness.

Or it was just push the balance in favour of those who spend hours contrawhoring, or buy moneypacks. Making things more expensive won't make them less avaliable, it will just make them avaliable more to the "upper classes" of LL.

It happens IRL. Look what happened in Iraq when the UK and US decided to invade. They tried to make things better by storming the place with jets and tanks, but all it did was create further problems along the line, eventually causing Tony Blair to resign. Limelight is currently near the end of the war you could say, the repercussions are starting to set in.

The Middle Easy has been a hotspot for conflict for many years, so comparing that to LL isn't really fair.

In this case I am referring to the addition of M249's and armored vans as the attack, and the community becoming worse as the fallout. Limelight has a chance of pulling out, (not sexually). Dev's have had the opportunity to remove the content they added in, but didn't after community backlash, which has further escalated the problems.

The M249 has been used 93 times in the last month. In comparison, the top 10 weapons have a combined total of 8501 uses (850 average uses each). It's rare, fairly expensive, and has an extremely limited use-case. I'd argue that adding an extremely situational weapon, which doesn't get used that often (0.67% of weapon use in the past 30 days), wouldn't be the downfall of all RP.

Topic 3, The Dev Team:
The dev team is excelent. They produce amazing content, but we seriously need some sort of dev manager to sort out what gets prioritised.

We have two. Myself and @Faustie. We've had some issues with others dictating what needs to come first, but we've got those sorted out. Faustie's currently writing up a thread to go over this in more detail, so keep an eye out for that.

There are some major issues we need fixed before we start adding new stuff, fixed the hook errors for example, you know when it says "Unknown Hook Error ?????" and your game crashes. Yeah. How about solving that before you decide to add a fucking tank or something to add even more errors.

Aye. We can't tell what it is though, because nobody provides crash logs, the errors don't say what's erroring. If we knew what was broken, we could fix it.

I'm not having a go at the dev team as I honestly think they do amazing work but the PRIORITIES. Seriously.

Thanks, it means a lot.

Topic 4, The Staff Team:
The staff team are great, always friendly, mostly proffesional and manage the server fairly well ,*pause* when they're on. Is it just me or does anyone else orgasm when you see that little yellow icon upon joining. Its truely a miracle to see it. We either need to recruit more staff (although I do understand the serious nature of choosing players) or get the staff active again. I don't know, give em 5k per sit they do or something so it actually encourages them to go on, and doesn't make them feel like they are missing out on earning while doing sits.

Honestly, we've lacked in this area before, and I've been pushing it a lot, as @Overlewd can tell you, with his weekly graph dumps. That being said, we're improving, with staff getting on more (or if not getting on, participating in discussions more).

Topic 5, PassiveRP:
Big topic, huge. People constantly complain about the lack of passiverp. I can give you one simple reason, theres no reward. If you honestly think people come on the server to sit in a shabby restaurant made of props with no customers, then you're delusional. People join whitelisted servers like MazeRP and SantosRP for that kind of thing. People come on to have fun, and to have fun they need money and cool items. This is why we need more reward for passiverp.

We do see this issue, and again, you'd be best to wait on Faustie's thread for further details on this.

Adding expiration dates for food would increase passiverp GREATLY. Adding perks for things like coffee and weed (eg stamina boost, faster sprint, more health etc in exchange for cons like blurry vision) would greatly increase Coffee Shop and Dispensary RP. Couple this with expiration dates would increase the flow of customers dramatically.

This is something that really would be best as a suggestion. When planning projects (ex the REP overhaul) we do go through approved suggestions to look for more in-depth ideas, something @Nev was amazing for.

My next point ties with the more active staff. REP. The second most valuable currency. People want that sweet juicy REP so they can buy new outfits, but people won't rp if they know they're not gonna get REP. I understand you've said that you mustn't rp for REP, but its the main driving force for it. Increasing staff numbers or activity will in turn increase the number of people PassiveRPing, knowing they're being watched by staff who hold the power to that digital gold.

We've done parts of this already. Teachers can give REP, who are often on for longer periods of time, not having to deal with @ calls, so able to take the time to look into RPs.

We should also focus on increasing the impact of a death. This could be by making the respawn time longer, or by introducing new in game punishments for dying like losing the outfit you're wearing. This is what will increase PassiveRP more than anything else mentioned.

Again, lots of things are being looked at, but also to keep them balanced. Longer respawn times keep people out of play, which isn't fun. It's important to keep play fun too, because nobody wants to do stuff which isn't fun.

3: Doc and Faustie are dev management, and as noble has said in the past we need better devs and more of them, do you think Santos got to where it is with 6 GLua Developers over time?

I was having a discussion in steam recently about the same issue. We can't just snap our fingers and get new devs. Where mostly, becoming a business hasn't effected the community, it has effected us in development. We need to ensure that developers we get are trustworthy, and have various background checks. We need to ensure any code they make is optimised and follows the style guide (so it's easier to read and maintain). We would need to provide documentation, code examples and what-have-you, to ensure they can actually develop for the GM.

[Taylor]

@Doctor Internet 

“We've done parts of this already. Teachers can give REP, who are often on for longer periods of time, not having to deal with @ calls, so able to take the time to look into RPs.”

There are currently 6 teachers, 2 of which are rarely on. REPs are very rare, personally I think you should increase the number of people who can gives REPs.

[Doctor Internet]

“We've done parts of this already. Teachers can give REP, who are often on for longer periods of time, not having to deal with @ calls, so able to take the time to look into RPs.”

There are currently 6 teachers, 2 of which are rarely on. REPs are very rare, personally I think you should increase the number of people who can gives REPs.

As I said, parts. It's not optimal, and there's more things we can be doing, but it's a start.
(please don't tag me again, i'm subbed to the thread )

[CMR99]

I did HaloRP, and a few other Military Roleplay stuffs, @Doctor Internet - not Star Wars RP. Ew. What kinda scrub do you take me for.

On a more serious note, one of the main contributing factors to people just going towards picking up a gun and stuff is probably how we perceive them - they're more than just a set piece, a prop for the roleplay. At the current moment, on L2, they are a core gameplay element. If we had more focus on roleplay elements, such as a player based market or more incentive to run a store of some kind, that would be the norm.

Guns should be an element of choice, not necessity. Given how common they are and easy they are to get, this is not the case, however.

[Cole]

The reason that REPs are so rare is because there's such little roleplay that I see, or any other teacher for that matter sees, roleplayed well, or any innovative ideas. Here's an example: A player by the name of Kingz did an airsoft roleplay not too long ago and it was incredible, one of the funnest roleplays I've participated in for a long time. He got a REP. Roleplaying isn't all about /me's and /it's but rather the concept behind the roleplay too, the idea behind it, the motivation behind it.

Don't take as me saying "your roleplays are awful, give up", cause that's not what I am saying. What I am saying is that REPs are rare due to the roleplay that people choose to go for; aggressive roleplay. I'm going to address the argument of "so if aggressive roleplay is so popular, why not be less strict on giving REPs to those doing passive roleplay?", and the answer to that is because there are plenty of REP restricted items on the marketplace so to just give REPs out like candy to those doing passive roleplay means they will gain an advantage simply because of other people's roleplay style.

On the topic, one idea I had not too long ago was to reduce or restrict the Gun Dealer job.. or even remove it entirely. This is because it will make weapons rarer, as well as ammunition, for criminals; which is how it should be. Sounds good so far right? Now to completely collapse that idea, the reason that this idea will never work is because if it was to be implemented weapon and ammunition prices will sky-rocket and further damage an already dead economy.

Furthermore, another idea I had was to add more systems for passive roleplaying such as: housing rental, proper bus systems, taxi faring, and so on and so forth. So, the advantages of adding such systems: people will want to test out the "new" systems and so will spend money - slowly draining unnecessary money out of the economy; it will encourage people to do more passive roleplay over aggressive roleplay; it also allows for more in-depth roleplays. Just like anything, there are some disadvantages: it will take a very long time to implement such things with the small development team on Limelight - especially how they're focusing on optimisation; it will very finnicky, the slightest of mistake could be the cause of another explosion of issues.

[Ricky LaFleur]

“We've done parts of this already. Teachers can give REP, who are often on for longer periods of time, not having to deal with @ calls, so able to take the time to look into RPs.”

There are currently 6 teachers, 2 of which are rarely on. REPs are very rare, personally I think you should increase the number of people who can gives REPs.

As I said, parts. It's not optimal, and there's more things we can be doing, but it's a start.
(please don't tag me again, i'm subbed to the thread )

maybe vets can give REPs?

[Taylor]

“We've done parts of this already. Teachers can give REP, who are often on for longer periods of time, not having to deal with @ calls, so able to take the time to look into RPs.”

There are currently 6 teachers, 2 of which are rarely on. REPs are very rare, personally I think you should increase the number of people who can gives REPs.

As I said, parts. It's not optimal, and there's more things we can be doing, but it's a start.
(please don't tag me again, i'm subbed to the thread )

maybe vets can give REPs?

They resigned and gave up their powers for a reason, no point giving it back to them when 99% of them don’t play anymore

[Taylor]

Let's see how honest I can be without getting banned

"This is in order to try and address some of the issues with staff coverage gaps by hopefully allowing us to get more moderators."

I'm not even being funny at this stage, you guys specifically state you will TRY and address some issues regarding lack of staff and are HOPEFUL about getting more moderators, but you've promoted one, yes a single moderator who's in a minority timezone despite over a dozen worthy candidates just sitting there, waiting for the shot you'll never give them. I fully understand you have high standard, but it's a TRIAL rank. So fucking trial people and if they do not perform to your standards remove them from the damn position.

1 trial moderator is nowhere near enough to fulfil the server's needs, you guys need to stop being so strict and actually TRY people out.

/rant over

[greg]

Gain active leadership who actually communicates with the members instead of sitting by staff members who should be replaced or pushed to actually do their roles.

Make someone like 26 or Daley HR?

26 so far (including his sometime asshole attitude) knows when to switch on and off serious mode. He holds his shit and knows when to cut someone some slack. He’s focused on the player, not the rules. Anyone that takes rules over RP or fair fun is a terrible community member.

"anyone that takes rules over rp or fair fun is a terrible community member" so ur telling me breaking rules is a-o-kay in ur book if its fair fun