I can't find a better way to describe TF as a server that shows us why the common adage "don't rest on your laurels" is so telling of reality. Everyone seems to more than eager to bring up our past successes but do not think to mention what we can do to improve the server in the future. Let us all remember that the present is merely a culmination of all of our actions in the past. Repeating our past actions and/or staying the same would absolutely not fix the core issues that this server currently suffers from. The past should be used as a learning opportunity so we don't repeat our historical mistakes.
Let me not be mistook here, as I am not trying to dirty the memories older players have of this server. But let's not pretend that the past wasn't full of rampant corruption, insiding and general incompetence. We need to focus on the present & the future, not the past. We can't just stay the same forever, and expect the players to stay. That's not how players are retained. You need to constantly iterate upon the core idea that the server offers.
The power of relatively inactive management needs to be split up and given to others. There's no poison worse for any sort of organised entity than that of unreachable/uncontactable management. There could be some sort of executive activity requirement, or some policy with similar effect. No hate to the current management, but they all clearly have better things to do with their time. There are multiple people (including me) who have enough free time to constitute at least a few hours being spent exclusively on TF everyday.
As a developer, I can't begin to put into worse how fustrating the state of TF is. Our development team, while currently small, has enough manpower to constitute maintaining the server and the custom plugins. However, that's made incredibly difficult because of the way changes are officiated. In the next paragraph I will lay out the procedure for getting a change to TFM pushed to the server:
- You make a branch off the development branch in the TFM repo.
- You commit your changes to that branch.
- You open a pull request for the changes to be merged into development.
- You wait for another developer to review your changes.
- If necessary, you make the requested changes and then go back to step 4.
- If your changes are approved, you or another developer merge it into the development branch.
- The changes on the development branch are tested until they are deemed ready for the main branch.
- Successful testing on the development branch means that it will be merged into main.
- A release will be created from the main branch.
- That release will be put on the server.
Now, this is quite standard procedure for any large open source project with thousands of contributors, however considering TotalFreedomMod is a project that is worked on by volunteers and in their own free time, step 4 and beyond take really hard to complete.
What I suggest is that all future endeavours relating to the development of TF are stripped of the more excessively bureaucratic aspects (i.e. having one main branch and removing the release system). Pull requests and separate branches are a good thing, but the way everything is setup and operating at the minute is just downright silly.
I truly want TF to succeed. However, the way it is at the moment, I see no other eventuality other than its slow and painful death. Major change needs to be enacted, and fast.