[Quest]

Honestly I feel like it has been quite toxic for the years I have been here. It's just 90% of the good people here have realised how toxic this place is and have moved on. This has left behind a bare toxic community full of some quite nasty people in my opinion; hence why I don't play on here anymore I just like to keep up with the community since one day I do wish to return.

[Welker]

It really do be like that

[Markus]

Our community is not growing, and there's a good reason for that. This reason both serves to limit the appeal to new players and also serves to decrease interest in the game for loyal players. The simple reason for this is a lack of new and interesting content.

New content allows our gamemode to seem more interesting to new people browsing for servers and also adds dept for loyal members of the community. When there is no new content, our gamemode begins to become outdated and unappealing to new players looking for new experiences. And for the loyal members, they gradually fade away as something new catches their eye and our little server becomes forgotten.

This is the state which our server presents itself in today. We are years behind other servers in content, our older players have nothing new to experience, and thus our veteran members are fading away and no new players feel compelled to join.

This also comes into play for the current topic of discussion: toxic community. Communities in games form from people uniting under a common goal. That goal may be becoming rich and powerful through rare items, self motivation and security through a sense of community, and various other reasons. The problem with LimeLight is that there is no common goal amongst players to unite them. Money is too easy to earn, items too easily accessible, and other rewards such as those earned through REPs unsatisfactory or unclear on how to obtain. 

Thus, we have no sense of community other than a few small groups of friends and clans. Unlike clans of the "old days" back on pre-split FL, many of the clans of today are not centered around things like contra whoring or security. Players already have everything they need so why join a clan? Well the answer is simple: a sense of community and also something to do.

Much like a bunch of children locked in a room with nothing to do, they'll start abusing each other for entertainment. Clans are now formed for actions surrounded around confrontations. Whether that may be mild antagonizing or outward aggression, people are so bored to the point that being dicks to each other is the most fun thing to do. And what could be seen as mild banter between friends is seen aggression and annoyances by most players as there is no overarching sense of community and common goal amongst players. 

So what does this all mean? Our server is outdated and lacking anything new to do, leaving potential new players to look elsewhere and older players to fade away. Whoever stays in hopes of things changing and recapturing the glory days they once had where everything felt fresh and exciting are left bored and frustrated. If those loyal players do not end up leaving they typically end up just annoying each other for fun because that's all they have left. 

So how do we fix this? We need a new set of challenges for veteran players to take on. New heights to reach and a satisfying feeling of accomplishment once they reach that goal. Think back to old FL with the gas mask. For you newer players, the CSS Gas Mask suit used to be restricted to people with 10 RPpoints and anyone who had one was seen as the coolest person on the block. That gas mask suit gave someone a feeling of status and accomplishment once they achieved it. 

LL lacks anything like that these days. Give players something to shoot for and truly enjoy. Something which they can show around and have other people admire and envy them for. Like a Skillcape on Runescape or the Gas Mask of old, people need a goal to shoot for. Make it a goal achievable by individuals but more fun to work for with friends. This will slowly grow the interest in the game beyond farming weed and making money and hopefully build a healthy and cooperative community once again.

This was typed on my phone and I text like a boomer. Sorry for any typos.

Unfortunately, there is not a single answer to this question. Even you are saying "give something to shoot for and truly enjoy". Trust me, we are working on stuff constantly, but we are only a small team of around 10 people. Many developers have left over the years due to growing out of the game, getting into adult life, or just due to negative feedback and criticism.

Even for indie studios, the employees spend day and night working on their big debut to the industry and they give up their personal life for that. I'm pretty sure that none of us do Limelight as our main job. We have to divide our attention between university and/or jobs and Limelight. While we respect the community and give it everything we can, sometimes it's not enough.


But all that said, we are always looking for feedback, ideas for "the next big thing" and -and I can't stress this enough- we are constantly working on Limelight. Stay tuned and if you wish to contribute to the development, make sure to apply at the
Contributor Applications sub-forum.

[kellekerell]

I totally agree with the others. There is no individual to be blamed for this, but it is just how things developed over time. 
As hard as it sounds, you can tell that something isn’t alright with (as Markus said) around 10 people that work for the development of Limelight while having around 1-2 people online for the most time of the day.

New players only join when there’s new stuff on the server that makes it better than others. Limelight has definitely had some nice additions in the past but nothing extraordinary if you get what I mean. Why should new players want to stay here for a long time if there are plenty other servers that get updated more often (often with the help of addons from sites like gms) and hence have more up-to-date content?

At the same time, older players grow up over time, grow out of the Gmod scene basically. Some say they just find better servers whatsoever but I don’t think that’s the case with Limelight... Most veteran LL players just stop playing Gmod in general, not that many switch to other servers. This was always a thing and will always be a thing, Limelight’s issue is that there are no new people coming in. Check the posts, check the Discord. It’s pretty much always the same people that talk, I barely see people I don’t know chatting on the LL Discord server. Limelight just doesn’t really make lots of random players stay... 

What can be done about that? I don’t know, awesome content additions have been discussed lots of times. I just wanted to write down the issue I see with Limelight.

[Nev]

@Dick‍

I haven't been one to receive many PR's but throughout my stay here in this community I have come to notice that a large number of users have used the PR system as a way to remove players that aren't liked.

I have no good feelings towards users that, even if an infraction was done against them, have the mentality to use such a tool with ill-intent. 

Are people so genuinely off-put by a game? I don't understand the logic in handling many of the infractions by recording a video, compiling evidence, uploading said evidence to a platform, creating the narrative in the report and pushing for something to be done via administration. Did jimmythegamer69 really push your buttons in todays game sesh? Did his breakage of FearRP/RDM really put you out of your way? 

I am all for having a team of administrators. That being said, I also think it is important to create a community that isn't out to get one another. If someone broke a rule, tell them how they can improve. If it is intentional, try and solve it another way. Surely there are alternatives. Get them to compensate you for lost items, lost time, etcetera. What's everybody so up in their panties about in regards to getting people removed for days from a video-game? Most of you are pretty toxic here. Snitches all around us. Why would I want to interact in-game with someone with a record of being out to get other people? Heck no. I'd rather play with a minge than someone with such low self-esteem.

---

@kellekerell‍

New players aren't joining Limelight because of new content. New content has no impact on whether or not new players join, because new players aren't on our forums staying up-to-date with that sort of business. New players only join by seeing our server either looking for popular servers via gametracker or the server browser. 

If we can improve our standing, which one of my suggestions aims to do, we can bring visibility to an all-time high. Once our visibility is up, let's get people to start playing again. With the combination of high-visibility and a populated server, the amount of unique players that will join our server will be enormous.

[Taylor]

It doesn't, but it helps stop the posturing that happens in the PR section

Do you want more censoring or less? because at this point I have no clue anymore.

I want the PR section to remain only visible between people involved in that particular PR, so as to avoid people using the PR section like a place to publicly air their personal grievances.

Fearless has done this will applications, tbh it would make a small difference to make the courthouse section only visible to the person posting it and staff

[Zambie ^‿^]

Honestly, I completely agree. When I joined it thrived with people and everyone was always friendly and there was always something to do. I then left in 2016, and the times I came back in 2017, 2018, 2019 were just never the same. The content was good but the Roleplay was toxic and the chat was toxic, the community was toxic and it drove me away from returning for another couple of months before I’d give it another shot.

It’s really sad to admit it, but the players have done a huge detrimental impact for the community that I once loved

[ICEKILLER_99]

hey guys it's me 

I came back in 2019 for a bit, realized how fucking petty and toxic this community turned out to be and just left again. I got OOC blacklisted for playing music down my mic next to 2 people. Guess why. Because the teacher that was there wanted staff SO BADLY that he reported me for mic-spamming. Sure I was a bit toxic to him before that but he seemed like the kind of person to want power and power only. I honestly can not be asked to play on a server with a bunch of cry babies that will try to do anything to get anyone else on the server banned.

Also where are the near-daily updates we were getting before? Where's the "PROMISED" combat update?

I was recently asked to come back and play by @XxGIORGIOxX‍ and @Nitrogue‍ but I denied that offer mainly due to addon issues but also the absurdly low player count and pettiness.

The gameplay is stale, there's nothing new to do, there's no players

[Pat]

hey guys it's me 

I came back in 2019 for a bit, realized how fucking petty and toxic this community turned out to be and just left again. I got OOC blacklisted for playing music down my mic next to 2 people. Guess why. Because the teacher that was there wanted staff SO BADLY that he reported me for mic-spamming. Sure I was a bit toxic to him before that but he seemed like the kind of person to want power and power only. I honestly can not be asked to play on a server with a bunch of cry babies that will try to do anything to get anyone else on the server banned.

Also where are the near-daily updates we were getting before? Where's the "PROMISED" combat update?

I was recently asked to come back and play by @XxGIORGIOxX‍ and @Nitrogue‍ but I denied that offer mainly due to addon issues but also the absurdly low player count and pettiness.

The gameplay is stale, there's nothing new to do, there's no players

That’s a name I haven’t seen in a while.

[Duckie]

It really hurts me that we need to have these conversations and that I can’t enjoy the community I used to know. 

That’s all I can really say.

[Dutch]

If we had as many people playing as people are complaining the server wouldn't be dead.
But yes most of you are right.

[Tom*]

I feel like people also got to bear in mind that dev and contribs do work as hard as they can to make content but I'm sure its very demotivating when you have certain people who are strangely toxic and then of course the people who directly ridicule the devs for releasing not perfect updates you know.

[Maveric]

I feel like people also got to bear in mind that dev and contribs do work as hard as they can to make content but I'm sure its very demotivating when you have certain people who are strangely toxic and then of course the people who directly ridicule the devs for releasing not perfect updates you know.

[Dutch]

I feel like people also got to bear in mind that dev and contribs do work as hard as they can to make content but I'm sure its very demotivating when you have certain people who are strangely toxic and then of course the people who directly ridicule the devs for releasing not perfect updates you know.

Big Facts.

[26']

I see nothing will change, shame. I truly hope LL can eventually find a good ground, but there will never progress unless community direction is clear and everyone is on the same page.. yeah good luck. The [L²] tag can change people's attitude towards you, it's crazy how it's still a "us VS them". 

Best wishes,