Regarding my random absence, The Admin team, and the Future

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Emptybag
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Regarding my random absence, The Admin team, and the Future

Postby Emptybag » Thu Dec 07, 2017 2:10 am

ZergHunter wrote:
So long as people have time off we hope they'd be able to play.

The servers kind of in a freeze frame right now, we'll be discussing story progressions and the like to continue from where we're at later on, but everyone is just super busy right now and unable to really work on things. The server takes a a lot of time and dedication to keep running and I know Empty's already stated what's going on with him.

We'll figure something out, I'd personally like to keep the current story line going as is right now if possible because I enjoy a lot of the characters in the current story, and I'm not a fan of restarting every 3 months.


If the entire community would rather a restart we can consider it. I'll admit though the Gmod community isn't what I'm used to anymore. When I used to run these servers we were able to stick with one story line for well over a year, and have a map change once every like 3-6 months, if that. People seem to lose interest much faster now in a server than they did before. It still seems like compared to the majority of new servers opening we seem to be the ones that outlast all the random schema's that open and close around us. But people are more interested in jumping ship and trying to next hot game for a month before it closes down than keeping a story going, which is whatever, that's what people want, but I'd much rather keep a single story going and developing as long as we can. (And I know a lot of you guys who still frequent the forums are the same way, otherwise you wouldn't still be checking these boards :P)

So I don't know where I want to go with this right now. We'll see what happens over the break and go from there I guess. If you guys have any ideas or suggestions we're more than happy to listen and work on them. One reason I love ZRP is because we can have a small dedicated community and still develop an amazing storyline, we don't need 30 players to make the world still seem real.

Anyway I'm totally rambling about nothing, let us know what you guys want.
I'm all in to continue as well, but I have had life to attend to and it's tending isn't going smoothly. I've gone through another flood, and even after we fixed it I still found out that there's a leak. But that's the least of my worries because I have loan payments totaling $2k coming up in January unless I can manage to finagle something.

Life aside though we were going relatively strong for a good few months, I think it was a combination of time of year, IRL troubles and map selection. We're always good to continue. Zerg's right, GMOD has changed since what we have grown up with, and if you don't change unfortunately you won't grow, despite if you have players that respect your choices or not. Now we need a billion guns and everyone needs them or else we're 'doing it wrong'. We've managed, but it's weird for us (at least, for me), to delegate these things because we're dinosaurs that come from a time where a firearm was legitimately a hard earned reward you get after months of development. That, and events sink in alot of time and make things transfer from more of a freeform freetime hobby to a stressor. And don't get me wrong, even during my leave, I worked on looking up interesting dynamic maps either for events or to go to for main maps -- some of them themselves a relic of the past -- but as a co-owner I've always tried to mold things to be different from the status quo; to not simply play rp_apocalypse or to make sure have an interesting twist on our idea. And those ideas are still cataloged for the admin team to dip into at any time, it's just with a lack of players mixed with people being busy, it hasn't been easy.

There also, along with the lack of my presence and the presence of other players, is the pull-out of other admins of ours. Essentially what we've had is Zerg and Knomad. I can understand why the others decided to claim we're dead, but goddamnit ZeroHour has always been like a Phoenix and always will be-- that decision just starts with the admins. This isn't because I'm afraid to let stories go and start over; rather, it's because I want to continue as circumstances rather unfairly 'ball & chained' our server where it was. And they're welcome back if they want to be but I similarly understand if they just decided to move on to other games that aren't 15 years old.

I enjoy thoroughly our sense of community, and you guys can't know how appreciative I/we are that you guys even bother to still check the forums despite you knowing the lack of presence on server. It really feels like we're tight knit. I've known we've had something, but it's small things like that that remind you.
About the story, we're both for keeping it and simply shifting seasons (to make timelines easier for new players), or keep the past timeline (if you wish), or, if the community desires, starting all over anew. But trust me, we've had surprises and things planned that haven't made it to the surface yet. There's a reason we had the addon package we had. So ultimately, it starts with us deciding we aren't done, and ends with you deciding if we should continue. Are you in for it? ;-)

As for me, I'll still be a shadow, but I'll be around. Feel free to message me even if I'm offline, I'll definitely see it. I need to just focus on not going to whatever they have in store for me for failure to pay (I know debtor's prison hasn't existed but I don't wanna find out what replaced it).

P.S. - If you felt shafted with not knowing what was going on, don't. I've barely said a word to my team in 2 1/2 months, I've just been suuuuper high strung over my indefinite future.
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Can0fs0da12
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Re: Regarding my random absence, The Admin team, and the Future

Postby Can0fs0da12 » Thu Dec 21, 2017 6:05 pm

Is the server dead?
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Andrew
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Re: Regarding my random absence, The Admin team, and the Future

Postby Andrew » Sun Jan 21, 2018 12:06 am

No, it's still up but in relations towards playerbase, yes. I might get on tonight if Knomad hops on like all the other times he does, here's hoping I have space for the content again
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Can0fs0da12
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Re: Regarding my random absence, The Admin team, and the Future

Postby Can0fs0da12 » Tue Jan 23, 2018 4:41 pm

Andrew wrote:No, it's still up but in relations towards playerbase, yes. I might get on tonight if Knomad hops on like all the other times he does, here's hoping I have space for the content again
I get on when I can.

But imo there needs to be a map change.

I honestly think a bit more power should be handed to Knomad considering he's the only staff that's ever on.
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Re: Regarding my random absence, The Admin team, and the Future

Postby ejflorkey » Wed Jan 24, 2018 1:39 pm

Never forget that I love most of you.
I have ZERO idea what it is you're saying Image
ZergHunter
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Re: Regarding my random absence, The Admin team, and the Future

Postby ZergHunter » Wed Jan 24, 2018 4:21 pm

Can0fs0da12 wrote:
Andrew wrote:No, it's still up but in relations towards playerbase, yes. I might get on tonight if Knomad hops on like all the other times he does, here's hoping I have space for the content again
I get on when I can.

But imo there needs to be a map change.

I honestly think a bit more power should be handed to Knomad considering he's the only staff that's ever on.
The map change isn't going to do much of anything. We're trying to figure out where we want to go. Empty and I both really want to see Zero Hour up and running with people again, but neither of us want to dedicate our lives to it. Running a serious RP community is extremely draining. You have to dedicate 90% of your free time to it. We both love working with you guys and this community. But we're trying to figure out a way we can do this without having to dedicate so much time, which is almost impossible because we have to be on to RP with everyone who gets on. And then we have to spend time planning events and story ideas, and a lot of time is dedicated to the forums here, and messaging members of the community as they bring ideas to us and the like. It becomes a full time job to run the server for both of us, and for a lot of the admins we have as well (Notice Knomad still idling) We all have things to do outside the server with people IRL, and we're all gamers at the core so we like being able to sit back and play another game from time to time, but when the server is in full swing, it's REALLY hard to find time to do anything but server work.

This community and server is something we care deeply about, and as a consequence to that we burn ourselves out. I personally work a full time job that I start each day at 6:30 AM, so running the server really messes with me because for some reason, no one gets on until 10PM if not later. So I force myself to stay up to 12 or 1AM, which going into work the next day makes me want to die. This is part of the reason I burn myself out on the server every time it's running with people on it. I physically can't do it without damaging myself. So please know we're discussing things, if you guys have ideas we'd love to hear them on how to work this out.
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Emptybag
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Re: Regarding my random absence, The Admin team, and the Future

Postby Emptybag » Thu Jan 25, 2018 8:19 am

ZergHunter wrote:The map change isn't going to do much of anything. We're trying to figure out where we want to go. Empty and I both really want to see Zero Hour up and running with people again, but neither of us want to dedicate our lives to it.

We all have things to do outside the server with people IRL, and we're all gamers at the core so we like being able to sit back and play another game from time to time, but when the server is in full swing, it's REALLY hard to find time to do anything but server work.

This community and server is something we care deeply about, and as a consequence to that we burn ourselves out.
Yeah, he's right. While the map change may be nice for those of you who want to try your own personal kickstart to things (which may work, and i've no objections), the map change will have no significance on any playerbase activity/server planning/storyline. If we change, it'll just be a change, and probably a temporary one at that.

Things got tight during the last quarter of '17, and because of that many of us had to/ found it easier to jump ship temporarily while we all regrouped. Regardless on how much the co-owners want to do something, the fact of the matter is that everything Zerg said will be echoed here. Dudes, I'm still pretty young and I just graduated college but right now I have nothing to show for it -- so on top of getting my life together, I also would enjoy playing my stockade of previously bought games and stay up to date with the newest titles (Like literally, I just beat DOOM like 2 days ago). Staying on top of things is REALLY time consuming, and even moreso when we're short staffed (as we may or may not be right now -- jury's still out on that one but as a definite we still have Knomad, Zerg, and myself).

We had a short discussion about this the other day. Essentially the conversation boiled down to: yes, we want to do something again -- after all the site and server has still been up all this time and it didn't need to be if we didn't have some sort of plan. But with the server in full swing comes the main challenges of planning, which is a team effort; idling, which is pretty much necessary as people these days don't join unless others are on [I've even been told certain people won't bother if less than 10 are on]; event execution, pretty self explanatory but again short-staffed; managing our lives, which for me isn't as much of a battle but as Zerg explained it very well is for others; and also juggling handling all of the aforementioned with other hobbies/friends/games in general, which themselves take a decent chunk of time away from the server that in the past has had some negative effects.

I'm not about here to spout doom and gloom so much as laying it out there for everyone to see. This stuff, even for our relatively small community, is a labor of love and drains you. I've cycled hundreds of workshop pages (more than once!) to find the content we need/maps for planning. Dealing with the backend stuff in PMs from disgruntled players/curious people/toxicity can be annoying, but even if it isn't it's just another thing in the stack of stuff, y'know? It might sound like complains from me but I honestly wouldn't change a thing, it's just a certain degree of dedication that is required, and neither Zerg nor I currently feel up to it, and we don't even necessarily want to harbor a challenge as steep as we have in the past.
ZergHunter wrote:So please know we're discussing things, if you guys have ideas we'd love to hear them on how to work this out.
And yes, this, as always, VERY much still stands. Specifically to the people who actually still visit and use the forums, and those of you who are excited for a possible return. At the core we've always been siding with our community, and without one we wouldn't have much -- so an open discussion on the issue is just as encouraged as PMs between people. We've nothing to hide, and literally any idea is fair play at this point. Remember, we haven't given up and the proof of that is simply that this forum still exists.

I know I sputtered alot at you but I hope my 3am ramblings make some sense.
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Andrew
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Re: Regarding my random absence, The Admin team, and the Future

Postby Andrew » Sun Jan 28, 2018 12:56 am

It made too much sense actually, I've been in your shoes for a bit Empty and it's not really the greatest but, oh well. As for understaffing, Silly and I have been wanting to become something for a while now and it's just an option if you do need us. That being said, the server itself was/is great and I'd love to see it do a grand come back but I'm not sure how it'd be done as said in your post above. Obviously, the server in the best state right now but there'd be a way to bring it back as shown in previous times. Macho Roleplay happened but I'm not really sure what happened to it, then ZeroHour happened, died, and came back. There's always a chance the only question being; when and how.
It's just my coin of thought placed into the thread.
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Emptybag
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Re: Regarding my random absence, The Admin team, and the Future

Postby Emptybag » Mon Jan 29, 2018 9:27 pm

Andrew wrote:Macho Roleplay happened but I'm not really sure what happened to it, then ZeroHour happened, died, and came back.
MRP was ZH. When we first launched originally it continued it's story because it was left hanging in a really unfinished state when it 'ended' and all the players kinda felt robbed of an experience. Obviously continuing another server's storyline was confusing for newcomers and didn't work out the best, so we only continued until the older players felt some sense of closure and then relaunched again.

I still feel like ours is salvageable this time, there isn't really anything pre existing in story that would confuse newer players. But yeah, just answering your question :)
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Spring
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Re: Regarding my random absence, The Admin team, and the Future

Postby Spring » Wed Jan 31, 2018 12:17 am

Do you think when we all return we could do like a negan thing? Or something that involves all and is like there the entire time. Whether it's a long event or bandit pack
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