My Inactivity

I'm not going to post a huge rant justifying my inactivity, but rather explain my situation a little bit and open the floor to whoever wants to comment / help. I'm stuck in a transitional period in my life at the moment, stuck somewhere between working (and finding a job), moving, being broke, and struggling to find an actual education, that's left me with little drive to go on server. I have the free time, I won't sit here and lie when I've clearly been spending my time on other things, but I lack the drive or motivation to dedicate all of it to Advent (as much as I feel like I want to).

As it stands right now May has been payed for, I'm scheduled to pay for June at the end of the month. I've been so distant lately that I'm not even sure people are using the server, if you are, please do tell me and I'll try to keep it up and running. If the server is dry, I'm going to open the floor for anyone who would like to take my reins and maybe try to make something of the work we have here while it's all here. Talk to me on Steam if you have the time if you're really interested and are wholly invested in the work we did put together here and I can set you up with the means to run events or oversee the server. If there's a population here I'll do my best to support you with the server. I might find the energy to go on in the next few days and if I do I'm going to try and rally some others as well.

TL;DR, I'd like someone to take my place as admin, I'll pay for the server so long as it's being used.

And I'm sorry for promising to be on-server when I've clearly been neglecting the entire community. I've fallen into a rut and you'll simply have to work with me here.

Sounds rough, I can understand your inactivity then. While I'm not exactly sure about people joining the server the last few days because I was kind of distracted by Fallout:NV myself after I went on yet another modding spree...

However, what I can confirm you is that the RP is still alive, just that it was done through steam chat for an event lately.

After this event, I will try to get more people on sometimes, particularly during the weekends. But don't expect much from me during the weekdays the following weeks, stupid circumstances have taken ALOT of my previously freed time.

I've managed to get the blues from talking to someone about the situation of advent which is why i've been a bit neglectful, i was gonna get on the weekend but family event came by.

I'd be eager to take role as admin but highschool is tapering to an end so finals are coming up and then i got pressure from my peers about doing something over the summer like volunteering or getting a job. I'll be eager to take the mantle but I'm worried i'll be swamped with something.

We all know we want advent to do well but i think we've all slowly drifted into jobs and school or demotivating and draining activites and such, but i think we're gonna be able to stick this rut, as of right now, i feel the blues going away, I'm positively sure we're all up for rp.

Cakebread wrote:

We all know we want advent to do well but i think we've all slowly drifted into jobs and school or demotivating and draining activites and such, but i think we're gonna be able to stick this rut, as of right now, i feel the blues going away, I'm positively sure we're all up for rp.

we too old

we went too far

I hope to see things pick up, for the server and for everyone involved.

I was just wondering wtf happened to this server lol.

Yeah there's the very real possibility that the community that was once Olden...Grew up and moved on to have jobs and such and have less time available for RP, specially since most of this RP took place really late at night.

I'm starting to think that the part of the community that does want to continue doesn't really need something as expensive as a server. It's sort of...Dooming the whole thing to never grow, then again neither Olden nor Advent really did grow at the rate other GMOD serious RP communities ever did.

I'm torn, I'm not sure if you all placed too little effort on this...Or too much. With more effort it'll probably become more known in the GMOD scene while simultaneously polarizing the already established members of the community that most don't even have a machine that runs GMOD at any decent performance, by turning it into just some forum/chat thing you effectively remove this problem while simultaneously erasing any exposure Advent had.

I say that's pretty accurate, but the server could help in some aspects, in chatRP you're only limited to the characters you know and people you have in your friends list, if it's done through steam chat. So the server is a good way for getting diffirent people/groups to interact with eachoter while chat is inexpensive and can almost always start even when you have the worst computer.

I'm okay with both ideas, but if one proves better for keeping the community and RP alive then I won't have second thoughts about choosing.

Heres my two cents:

I believe bringing the rp to chat or forum rp will outright kill the community. Why?

Its too exclusive

We would be roleplaying with the same people, day after day, and if someone just ups and leaves then bam, one person down, but wait three other people have left in previous months, now theres only two or three people left. The community lives off new people coming into the server saying "I've been looking for a server like this forever", I've seen atleast ten people join Advent saying this, but alas here comes the next problem.

The way as the server is, there is no drama, there are no jobs or events.

We need some sort of method of event making, and having three people that control the events, difficult in a way to have flowing rp. We were supposed to have three maps to rotate on, but we maybe need a few more (3 or 4 extra admins) people to maybe rotate the server, throw up some bounties, maybe make a few events here and there. I suggest heavily that we change the map, it is much too focused on the city while you need to be out in a forest every so often, maybe take up Aeria's old map.

To add onto the drama, we need some sort of "bad guy", who or what, I'll leave that up to other people, but maybe something that drives a "Main" storyline. Although, when I say main, I don't mean the server will 100% revolve around that, I mean a bunch of events and stories will weave in and out of it, with mentions or relations to the main story are relevant.

All I can say is, we need to be very very very careful with this. I suggest everyone in the community thinks up of a plot in the perspective of the villain and then from here we can create some sort of basis of how the server can run day to day. I say in the perspective of the villain, because then it is much easier to get a handle of how the events will play out.

Also, very very important

There needs to be characters that are part of the "bad guys", but these cannot, cannot, cannot be characters that are played just for the purpose of the events. If anyone from Aeria remembers Boom, he played on Marcus Olm just about everyday, and hell, correct me if im wrong, but he drove the wheels of that server. We need characters like his, characters that have a developed story, persona and relationships with other characters. Characters with devious goals that will effect others.

Boring events where you kill goblins dont drive a server, a ever changing storyline does. We just need something to kickstart it.

Although, for these goals to be made, we might need to make a few of the "play once for an event character" and those should be played by those who are well read into the lore.

TL;DR

Spoiler:

TL;DR We need event coordinators, people whose job is to make events and progress a storyline.

I accept. Ku-ku-ku.

it's not just the RP, it's the population as well. keeping a stable population going on the server implies having enough interesting stuff to keep new people in while keeping the quality of the RP high enough for the veterans to stay committed.

in terms of the script, I am aware that I haven't actually done anything with the script lol, but I didn't have any focus on it at all. I realize now that throwing time at adding more player customization options when PAC is as advanced as it is, is a waste of time. the best possible option would be actually to just streamline the script, remove all the stuff we don't use and add stuff we may use (like linking the lore in game), and maybe make the HUD and VGUI a bit more in line with the theme of the server.

Atlas wrote:

Stuff

Creating villains can certainly drive plots and stir things up, but so can creating characters with clear goals who set about accomplishing them in any way they know how. I've noticed a trend of characters that don't say or do much besides fight, and that's probably what's causing so much boredom.

Also, I'm not sure BooM is the best example of the kind of characters Advent will benefit from. BooM demonstrated repeated powergaming and only cared about his own character's advancement rather than helping the entire community. When playing as a villain, player cooperation is the key.

Quote :

11:45 PM - Pat: the current overgod can't stop the cycle
11:45 PM - Pat: maybe a new one could
11:45 PM - Blue: maybe marcus olm could
11:45 PM - Blue: lololol
11:46 PM - Pat: oh my god
11:46 PM - Pat: he actually wanted that by the way
11:46 PM - Pat: to become the new overgod
11:46 PM - Pat: and preside over a utopia

I agree that creating a villain would drive forward a plot. But we don't neccesarily have to specificaly create a villain to drive forward a plot, any threat or goal can drive this plot forward.

I admit that i'm guilty of the type of character that doesn't say much, but this is purely because my character isn't exactly the type of person that immedialty aproaches everyone and introduces. However, with time, I would eventualy have encountered more people and be able to interact with other characters more actively.

One thing i would like to say of wich i'm heavily uncertain how people will react: Give the playerbase a little bit more power, if there aren't enough (active) admins, allow experienced players to set up small events and tasks for another, so the players don't suffer too much when there is no admin on.

Genxer250 wrote:

One thing i would like to say of wich i'm heavily uncertain how people will react: Give the playerbase a little bit more power, if there aren't enough (active) admins, allow experienced players to set up small events and tasks for another, so the players don't suffer too much when there is no admin on.

No one has said you're not already allowed to do this.

When I say bad guy, I don't neccesarily mean evil overlord but really anyone with opposing ideals or goals that others, for example we could do something with the mine. Some noble wants to monopolize it while a union of workers want to keep it such that a miner mines his own ore and sells it on his own.

In terms of goals, we need something in the lore that can help us set these goals, for instance a thief wants to steal something, have some sort of rare item that a certain group is in possession of.

Also I suggest we organize the town guard again, open up applications on the forums once more and try to fill some higher up roles.

if there was one thing I didn't like about Olden back then was that there was literally one faction and it was the town guard, it had like a really big hierarchy that didn't really make sense for something that is supposed to be just a regiment of the army.

there could be so many more options in terms of factions. nobles of warring houses, mage schools, thief/assassin guilds, government officers, even like, cults and such. the more you get people to group up together the more RP you end up generating.

nobles would actually be a pretty cool idea.




just no princess allison maylarn pls

thorogoodd wrote:

No one has said you're not already allowed to do this.

Good point, I'll remain quite now as I fear i haven't said anything actualy insightfull and propably wont.

Atlas wrote:

we could do something with the mine.

I have a plan for that, but it likely won't be implemented until next week.