gmod [7-29-16]GMod Update - My Thoughts "So Far"

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

Hello, I would like to just go over a few things regarding the surveys we've been receiving here. The Garry's Mod division does need to improve and this includes everybody in it (Division Leaders, Server Managers, and Server Admins). 

 

Expanding

Well, this is the first thing I wanted to talk about. Recently, a thread was made recently about getting another new server. I really feel we should stop expanding and focus on servers we have/had.

 

Now, trust me, I want to expand, but there are issues with the Garry's Mod division that need to be fixed as soon as possible. Expanding won't fix those issues and from what I've seen so far, these issues aren't even being addressed between the Division Leaders or Council. Although, the Council is going to start looking into the issues in the GMod division (it started with the survey!).

 

First, it was DarkRP, which was literally not successful. And then it was CloneWars RP, which, from what I've heard, has many issues resulting in the server slowly dying (it isn't dead yet, but the population literally decreases everyday). Now, we are trying to expand and according to the poll results off of the original thread I linked, it looks like we may see another RP server? If this RP server doesn't work out, then we might as well give up expanding into RolePlay servers. CloneWars does have potential but I am hearing there are so many issues with it. Although I haven't seen the issues myself, the population graph does prove there is something wrong with the server:

 

An outcome that appears to be repeating itself with the Garry's Mod division is when a new server is complete, there are two users who each have their own "vision" on what the server should be. This causes conflicts and the server never actually succeeds. Maybe the wrong user is leading the server? I don't know, but I can't be the only one seeing this, right?

 

Anyways, like I said, I love expanding, but we need to fix the current problems in the division and stop ignoring it. It isn't just the Server Managers and Server Admins, I've seen some issues with the Division Leaders as well. We still have some servers doing well and some servers that are doing better recently. However, the main issues in the Garry's Mod division hasn't been addressed yet.

 

P.S. I wish our GMod MiniGames server succeeded. I believe that server had potential if it had somebody great to stick with it.

 

Donation Income

To start, Garry's Mod by far has the most customization than any other game GFL has servers in. As of right now, with the combination of CS:S, CS:GO, TF2, and GMod, GFL still isn't making enough donations to support the machines we pay (we only make around $500.00/m at the moment). That said, with the amount of customization Garry's Mod has, I personally feel our GMod division should be making more than $850.00/m. I've seen Garry's Mod communities with ONE server make over $1000.00/m.

 

I truly think our donation perks have to improve. That said, if you need something "unique" for the web-side of our donation system, feel free to contact @denros.

 

Performance

I haven't went onto any GMod servers recently, but from the survey results so far, many players are still complaining about servers lagging.

 

I never really went into detail with the Purge incident regarding an addon causing the server to lag, but I guess I can now. Purge was suffering for a couple months due to a poorly coded addon consuming a lot of the server's resources. Now, I'm not fully blaming the developer here, it happens. Who I am very upset with are the users who let this addon sit on the server for almost two months. You have to understand it sounds absolutely ridiculous to me and many others that this addon was literally lagging the server at > 15 players for two months. An addon like this shouldn't go unrecognized for two months. In fact, a week is almost unacceptable. Do you know how many players probably entered the server, saw there was continuous lag spikes (almost unplayable), and left the server with the mindset "Any server with GFLClan.com in the host name is a lag-fest"? Probably a lot, you'll be surprised.

 

A majority of GFL's servers advertise "No Lag" in their host name for a reason. For a very long time, GFL was known for "high-performing" game servers and I want that to continue. I know Garry's Mod is a hard game to control, but please, Division Leaders and Server Managers, do not let an addon like that sit on the server for that long again.

 

Overall, performance should be a high priority, but I do understand there are many un-optimized lua addons out there, especially with the game itself being un-optimized. However, there is a difference between "slight lag" and "bad lag" and our servers have been getting the "bad lag" recently and that needs to change.

 

Overall

This is not the big update post I was planning on making about the GMod Division. That post will be made with the Council's help, etc. This is more of a personal update and I just wanted to address some things that I've briefly saw while skimming through the survey results. The bigger update will be addressing the "Server Admins and Server Managers" problem.

 

Nobody should be taking this the wrong way, but things do need to change. Now, there are users out there who say the GMod division is the absolutely worse place in the world, which is not true. However, there are still some major improvements we need to see in the division.

 

Feel free to post your opinions here. If I see massive fighting here, well, I guess I'll just have to take action then

 

In all seriousness, I don't want to see personal attack posts like I saw on previous updates I made. If you're a Server Admin/Manager or Division Leader, you should be able to keep this discussion clean.

 

Thanks.

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

I didn't check for grammar mistakes, but everybody should get the main points of the update.

 

Thanks.

[Ben 2,390 / 32,172]

The only opinion there is that I'm going to save this quote:

6 minutes ago, Roy said:

 

Anyway, my word: I'm sad that DarkRP went down because of lack on the population - probably because I shouldn't have applied for the admin(considering I was busy with server management, and admining on other servers).

 

I hope there'll be huge improvements on the GMod side.

[Otter 890 / 10,500]

God fucking dammit Roy, another lenny? I'm going to see this in everyone's signature now.

 

As for CWRP, the server has some issues regarding some maps that crash the server with very little droids being spawned. *cough* endor *cough It also has a game breaking issue where people can delete doors/elevators when they are user+. It STILL hasn't been fixed. Happy, for what I've heard, only knows the basics(adding maps, adding guns to jobs, etc.) I'm NOT trying to insult Happy. This is ridiculous. It's been there since day 1 and it still hasn't been fixed. 

 

Another R(I)P server? DarkRP was actually fun, I played it for a little while and collected money, qDogg and Sasha we're good managers(at least, that's what I know). The server was talked about back when he first got power over it and hyped everyone up. He left the project and kept on hyping it up. It was eventually given to Joel Smith, which had qDogg, Sasha Grey, Otaku, and Domps on it almost every day fixing Joel's mistakes + adding things to help the server. The server was super hype for end of 2015/beginning of 2016, but it came out in the beginning of summer. It just wasn't fun to think about that.

 

As for GMod income and shit like that, I think what really makes a server get income is that it needs to be something cool and exciting to donate. A playermodel or trail? That's not fun. Purge did so well for so long because it had jobs that were so much fun to play as for supporter/VIPs, so people donated(that's what it felt like when I first played on it). I get ~150 ping almost always. I NEVER get so bad ping on any other GFL server. I've pretty much heard the exact same thing over and over again. "The server has hundreds of props on it causing lag and people do stuff that makes it lag." I remember when prop limits we're an actual reason to donate. 

 

Overall, the Garry's Mod community isn't "bad". It just seems that it has really bad people managing it.

 

im so tired kmn

Edited July 30, 2016 by Otter

[Bigtime 345 / 6,809]

I do agree if there was a more dedicated Manager MiniGames could have done better but also from what I remember the game mode was broken and the Dev was being too lazy to fix some things. Just what I remember, overall a nice little update post to keep people updated until the more important update comes out.

[Rcool64 1,007 / 16,299]

In terms of expanding servers, I don't think we should continue to add more RP servers due to the fact that it's difficult to get population and attract new people. You would have to teach them all the rules and such and compared to game modes like death run or murder, RP servers are pretty damn complicated.

 

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind having our current servers. In fact, I can see them having potential. However, those are the type of servers that require good managing and good population to make the experience enjoyable. The other game modes are so much easier for people to understand and less frustrating.

 

As for clone wars RP, the server is completely empty unless an event is going on. It's very fun when there's an event, but when nothing is going on, everyone leaves. Therefore, we need to find a system to keep the audience entertained (or we could always make GMs do a shit ton of work  ).

 

I do see why we need to focus on the current state of our servers because why waste money on another server when we can't even get one running fine? Overall, I believe we can get GMOD in a better state in the future and that we seek to be taking the right steps so far.

Edited July 30, 2016 by Rcool64

[HackingPotato 1,297 / 14,301]

I highly agree with Roy in the matter of expansion. We should not be expanding the gmod division until we have cleaned up the division and its management. Once that is said and done, we should not expand into RP servers unless we have the proper management to run it. Dark RP and Purge are dying/dead and some say that Clone Wars is getting to that as well. GFL is an excellent community for servers (in gmod) that are not RP, such as our old DR, murder, and ZS. If you do expand later on, the division leaders should focus on getting dedicated managers for those game modes, like a new Deathrun or DayZ. 

 

We have the potential to make popular servers, we just need to address these issue within the division before the community can move on. 

 

The community has to take that step back, look at the servers and ask ourselves "what went wrong?", then fix the issues. Once that is done, we can start expanding again. 

 

Just my 2 cents. 

[Chormee 2,973 / 29,227]

the problem with RP servers is that there's already SO many of them on countless communities. Adding more will not work. you'd need to create a whole new section of RP, which i think i speak for everyone in GFL when i say, nobody wants to do. Just because Purge was popular (and even that is slowly dying) doesn't mean any RP server will be popular

 

Adding something small like Flood, Minigames, etc, would be perfect since there aren't as many of those servers around and would be able to increase in population.

 

Second thing. Management. You'd need a dedicated person to manage a server like that, anyway. Someone who's played a whole lot of the server and would be a giant help to it.

 

If anyone disagrees with me, please don't bring it out on me. This is my opinion, and i will leave it as such.

 

Actually, one more thing i'm adding to this. Admins. (again, this is my opinion) Some managers need to be more careful when selecting admins. A few servers have admins who might not deserve it. But that's my opinion on some of them.

Edited August 3, 2016 by Stick
inserted the last part

[Lionel_Moosi 314 / 5,480]

RP servers are like TTT servers. Everyone always sees one and thinks "oh man it's just another server". Trust me, I know this firsthand. You need to make a unique server if you're expanding into these gamemodes, like making another CloneWars RP server when there's a bunch of others more than likely will not be successful (I haven't actually looked, this is just an example). Same thing went for TTT, there's just so many of that type of server that it's hard to make a new one. IF we were to expand into a new game, I would recommend not doing an RP or TTT server, at least for now. 

 

Edited August 5, 2016 by LionelMoosi