Despite uncertainty of the forum's remaining life, the controversial changes and lack of concrete communication - Garry is still responsible for creating (and supporting) this forum. Therefore, I'd like to thank him (and the admin/mod team - of course) for the existence of this community.
Share your stories about the good things Facepunch brought you. Please use the other threads for bickering about changes.
I'll go first:
Met most of my online friends (who have been a positive force in my life) through here, of which some I talk with daily. This community also helped me through some rough times when I was a teenager. Additionally, WAYWO motivated me to get competitive about programming and has had a direct impact on my career.
I like Facepunch but Garry sucks, this was especially evident to me after what he said and how he said the things about this forum.
The changes are stupid and FP is living on in spite of awful decision making.
The only thing I appreciate is the community.
I like Facepunch but I'm not going to suck Garry's dick over it.
That's how it is now, and I agree with you. Things weren't always like this, and that's why I created this thread - to reminisce about the good things FP brought you.
As far as I'm aware and as far back as I know Garry was always like this, he made childish, stupid decisions on a whim, it's just that people either thought he was being facetious or put up with it because it was mostly minor cases and not like since the development of the new forums when he's been constantly trampling on his userbase and forum functionality. So far he hasn't caught onto the fact that every single one of his grand new ideas is either a total failure that he's had to give up on, or was an okay idea executed in the opposite way to what people wanted, like extra subforums. He consistently refused to fix them because he didn't see it as a way to improve the existing forums, but to kill megathreads because he wanted Facepunch to be Reddit. When he finally gave up on that just recently, he made the conclusion of "therefore, people don't want subforums at all" and now here we are with several creative communities strangled and no video subforum.
I remember when the worst thing Garry did was kill the automotive, cooking, airsoft, and creationism corner subforums, then table tags. Table tags will always be the shining example of Garryism to me. Why get rid of them? Because people aren't using them the way I want. Why is it wrong that people are making neater OPs using them? Because Garry said so and Garry does what Garry wants.
If you want to make a Facepunch appreciation thread go ahead, I've got endless positive things to say about Facepunch. But I don't have a single positive thing to say about Garry.
Well, this is the thread. List some of the positive things.
The funniest thing about Garry taking a huge shit on all the members is that even for purely capitalistic reasons, he has every incentive to keep the community alive and healthy. Members make content for his games. They're willing to test them exhaustively. They have a deep understanding of the technologies being used. They ensure that a huge array of SEO keywords relating to his project lead directly back to a user forums for his games.
If Garry was smart enough to not actively fuck up the community he was very lucky to have in the first place, FP would be a much more valuable asset.
Well, this is the thread. The thread title implies you may do both. List some of the positive things.
Well, for one thing Facepunch's creative community has always been one of its strongest points. I haven't really experienced the Gmod side of things since I never got into that game, but in my early years when I lurked the TF2 subforum there was always something exciting happening and something new being shown off. Facepunch is the only place I can really think of where you can have a good discussion on any topic (other than maybe politics but ehhhhhh) with a variety of opinions that's civil and isn't a circlejerk or a shouting match. I've tried other places, and they're either bad for discussion or have horrible communities, whereas I can go anywhere on Facepunch with confidence. Except the Rust subforum. Because it's Rust.
I love daddy garry
This nonsence wouldn't happen on JBmod forums.
Heya garry, I read your blog posts recently find your tone a little bitter and frustrated. Here's wishing you overcoming your burdens through perseverance and open-mindedness!
We're here if you need us. (just don't threaten our existence lol)
Did Garry see the discord while this site was down? That's irrefutable proof it's not a good forum replacement.
While Garry has done a lot of questionable decisions ever since the migration to Newpunch, imo I think him and his studio still deserve recognition for keeping the forums up for so long.
Most other people in his place wouldn't have kept things up for so long.
With plans to shut it down he has proved he's just like the rest of them.
Also other forums shut down are because they're either dead or with developers that stop caring about the forums.
Not many games have the staying power of gmod, hence why these forums still get traffic. It makes sense to keep this up while the game is still near the top of steam most played. But if that ever changes this forum is as good as dead, Garry has made it abundantly clear. It wont be worth his time to keep it going.
This forum is a lot more than just gmod. I for one haven't played gmod in over 5 years or something. I still visit the site daily and post semi regularly.
I'm actually glad you mentioned his blog, I haven't read it in a long time due to him moving over to twitter but he's now decided to move back and the latest post is really interesting, I hope he goes through with that idea because it'd mean we can get some funky frontends going.
Some bits of Garry's blog post from today irk me in the wrong ways
I get that there’s a community of people there who know each other and have been communicating this way for 15 years, and that’s a precious thing, are you still going to be there in 5 years? 10 years?
I've been on these forums since I was 9 years old. I'm 22 now and never in my time using the Internet has any other forum come close to the functionality Facepunch has. Discussion, content, the users, hell overall the moderation is stellar. I will be here as long as Facepunch exists solely because it is the key example of a forum done right. Well, done right for the most part. Newpunch has been criticized in all the right ways I don't think it needs any more badgering.
I don’t know if this is wise from an ethical or legal point of view. We have 15 years of forum activity – 32 million posts. Can you hand that over just willy nilly? Do we need to pay a bunch of money to a lawyer to find out?
Plus what’s the benefit? Why do you need all of the old posts to relocate?
I don't have an answer for the legality, however the history of Facepunch is foremost a modern history of video game design. Now here me out that sounds dumb cause haha forums are a meme why should archiving posts be important?
When this forum launched it was the initial release year for Half-Life 2, a game that has forever changed the video game industry. Garry's Mod only tacked onto that fame with its own well earned success that no other game has ever come close to in competition (except maybe JB Mod (rest in peace)). But seriously, you know how many users here have moved onto bigger things in life because of the initial experience gained from simply developing mods for Gmod? I remember Major.Dump went on to work with Bioware on the Mass Effect trilogy, is that not a grand honor in your eyes? He made cinematic videos with Gmod way before SFM was even conceived. Lua was the introduction for many into programming careers, modelers and texture artists, need I go on?
It's clear cut to me Garry has either lost his appreciation for the community he made, or he never had the compassion to begin with. How Facepunch Studios could be so money tight with the grand successes of Gmod and Rust combined is something I have a hard time personally believing. The forums themselves only further advertise these products. Countless folk found Gmod through these forums and not the other way around because of attractions such as topical megathreads, videos, referrals, Rust even. But even so how could the community be made well aware of anything drastic regarding the forums when really Garry doesn't say jack shit at all about anything?
If FPS staff decided to experiment with optional monthly donation packages (a topic popularized specifically because of the threat of deletion) or increased the perks of gold membership it's quite possible there could be a good chunk of additional revenue. Anywho that's about it yeah.
I get that there’s a community of people there who know each other and have been communicating this way for 15 years, and that’s a precious thing, are you still going to be there in 5 years? 10 years?
I've been here for ~14 years, so yes, I'll be here in another 10. I wouldn't have been here for 14 years if i didn't enjoy being here. And considering it's been around longer that and still has a decently sized community that's still going on consistently, I can definitely say that it's worth keeping around.
I don't know, just do what you gotta do but the forums are really nice to talk around unlike most of the social media.
If the forums exist they need to be agile and evolving. I can’t be
the chokepoint there, so there needs to be a way to let the developers
in the community improve it themselves.
I’m leaning towards making the front-end site a SPA with a websocket
connection and accepting pull requests to it. We could COORS localhost
so people can develop locally but with the live data, and any legit
community alternatives could also be COORS’d.
That’d make the backend the only chokepoint – which is a tiny part of it.
Can someone translate this? Does this mean he's considering letting members of the community work on the forums?
Exactly that, backend will be closed off but it'll work like an open API, anyone can make a frontend then.
That only furthers my point, theres the gmod people, Rust, and community thst stayed for the forums itself.
And yet still here we are, possibly getting shut down.
If the forum and the world allows it, I'll probably be here at least another 50 years.
Y'all ever consider that maybe garry planned this whole fiasco to make the community closer and to have us realize how much we appreciate Facepunch/longform posting platforms?
Thanks garrybear. <3
You clearly dont know garry
Kind of hard to appreciate someone who got so upset at people not liking his removing megathreads idea that he perma'd various veterans.
Have you got any stories to share about Facepunch then perhaps?
For the 3 years I've been on Facepunch I've met so many good friends, gotten help with certain designs I've tried doing too. I've also had my political beliefs/knowledge come from this site too, as well as enjoying all the shitposting I've done on the site too. A lot of good time has been spent on here imo.
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