Garry you're being a bit of a twat - General

Hey Garry, you don’t know me and I really don’t know you. I've been on this forum for almost 12 years now, been visiting daily and I've spent more time mindlessly browsing then I'd like to admit. Hell I don't even play video games anymore but I still visit a forum originally made for a mod of a videogame. That's almost weird in itself, but the people and atmosphere is what kept me around. It was the fact that we of all forums kept it simple, no need to overcomplicate things. A simple forum for discussing everything and more while keeping proper etiquette. Simple and entertaining. I didn't like the change to the new forum, I understood it from a technical standpoint, but I disliked it for trying too hard to be something else. This was 50% me being nostalgic and 50% actually disliking it. The fact that the userbase wasn't growing anymore doesn't mean that the forum is dead and pointless. Most people came and stayed on FP because it was a simple yet diverse forum. They stayed and probably liked it for being what it is, as did I. Not because of some gamified coin gimmick. To me it seems like you only intend to keep the forums around if it somehow helps you marketing wise or financially which in my eyes is a shame. The past years I've found a great bunch of guys in the Automotive section doing all kinds of wicked projects from flipping diesel trucks to superbly painting cars or even restoring classic cars and trucks. Some real nice people with heaps of talent. All that on a video game forum? That's silly when you think about it as some of these guys probably didn't even have a license when Garry's mod came out. I even kept a thread in which I talked and posted about the racecar I’ve been building, a proper actual racing car competing on national level…I don’t have a website, don’t visit car or racing related forums, no I post about it on a video game forum. Now that is proper weird when you think about it. But now lately you've removed pretty much all the interesting sub forums and I've had a hard time keeping up with why everything keeps getting fucked up, I occasionally see you chime in and stirr up the beehive. I had to read some random thread to find out why stuff changed again. And to be honest you’ve removed everything that kept me coming here, Yeah that sounds pretty dramatic, I mean we're talking about a video game forum lol. But still I don't like seeing the small things I enjoy on a daily base disappear for no good reason. I'm not one for standing up and saying something about it, but hey why not, after 12 years I could probably voice my opinion. Hell I don't know where I'm going with any of this, I'm not good with words or trying to persuade anyone. I just wanted to say what I said. It's your forum, you have every right to do as you please. Just my 2 cents.

Ah yes, calling Garry a twat, very productive. I'm sure this won't encourage him to feel he's pissing in a seas of piss.

Bad post bad post bad post

People way more invested then me, who are much better at writing compelling arguments have written tons of posts with proper arguments and reasoning. None of them even got a response. I mean come on, lighten up.

Strontboer? more like strontposter

Welcome to the war zone Please do not stand in the open with a weapon, the artillery might hit you. Duck into a thread, it may incur limited visibility, but you'll live to fight another day.

I was expecting the badage boys

Literally one of the rules is to not not insult Garry

I feel like no one in this thread has even read the OP

I think that this topic came up a lot of times but I wholeheartly agree with it. I've spent about 11 or 12 years around this forum and it was always a pleasure. Met tons of cool people and the amount of varied topics was great. Since Newpunch, it's really hard to find things despite having a search function and a cleaner interface. I don't feel the need to browse the sections anymore, might be me but I only browse FP these days when I'm absolutely bored. It used to be my prime website when logging on the pc. The sense of community is kind of lost. The interface is far worse in my opinion and the sites fucks up on my phone and at work.

People have tried being polite, some being rude, some pleaded, pages after pages upon pages of users calling out to garry for getting rid of useful subsections. What else is there to add? Dude's painting a target on himself for adding the word twat in the title, even if the body doesn't mean any harm.

Personally I cant wait for facepunch to die so I can just escape it's weird grasp on my browsing behavior. The new forums are a joke btw. It's introduced more problems than it fixed and the lack of dedication to the product shows garry's signature attitude. Dont be sad when facepunch is gone. Just make sure to get contact details of the people you've grown to like.

I'm just sad that I've watched FP grow as a child. Now I just want FP to see me grow as an adult...

Garry needs to smoke some weed and take a vacation, and hire someone to clean up the forum while he's gone.

Don't drag us all down with you just because you can't exhibit enough self control to simply leave on your own accord. I've been using this site for well over a decade, it serves multiple purposes for me, even if as of late it's been a nuisance to do so.

As much as I'd like for Facepunch to stay up, I honestly think the damage is already done. Even if garry were to suddenly listen to the community and put things back / add shit in general it still wouldn't bring back all of those who already left. I'm still here because of that tiny hope that things will go back to normal but I honestly doubt it'll ever become what it once was. Facepunch has turned into one of those sites that I mindlessly browse when I'm bored which is just sad.

Make the front end of facepunch about facepunch products. It makes sense as a company to do this. Make a way for users to request sub forums by submitting a form. These are in an Other section at the bottom of the page. It's basically reddit but whatever. People like the forum structure I guess. People can moderate their own sub forum.

There aren't any rules right now., but that was sort of a de facto rule.

Do you think constructive advice is really what we're missing? If you want to talk about pissing in a sea of piss, look at the thousands of suggestions we gave that went ignored. There's enough material in meta to keep garry busy (?) for literal years

A permanent vacation sounds a lot better.

Has Gazza ever given a reason why the hell scrapping sections/subfora was anywhere near a decent idea? It's been a goddamn mess ever since, and as much I realise that Gazza sees this place as SA Lite, it isn't like it was necessary to slam the site into the proverbial iceberg just to follow SA's example.

Well if you shoot old yeller in the leg instead of the head then it's the bleeding out that kills him. Obviously that's no one's fault. So then you don't have to feel responsible when burying him.

I don't see how that makes him a twat, his forum after all, and I highly doubt it's a huge source of income or anything. That said, though, I do agree. The subforums were very interesting and I'd like to see them come back. The 3D Art subforum, all of the General subforums and Videos would be nice to have back (if not just to unclutter General). They could have used some culling as there honestly were a few too many, but removing all of them kind of sucks.

To be fair to Strontboer, he had a whole thread detailing his voyage into racing, the work that went into building his car, a massive step-by-step gallery that was a joy to read, even if you weren't into cars. Though I imagine it was a really good resource for racers and enthusiasts, too. It was one of those very unique and very personal threads, and it's hidden now because of garry's scorched earth approach of "If I can't make it work the way I want it to, I'll delete it". Strontboer asked him politely about it earlier this week, and while garry didn't have the time to answer his, or anyone's questions, he did pop in to threaten the community. I don't agree with using that title, but I do empathize

Thanks for all the reactions, I really don't mean any harm with the title. Just thought I'd light heartedly make a bit of a joke out of it, hence the "a bit" Perhaps this came off wrong as English isn't my native language. If it's really that unfit I could remove it, but everyone's seen it by now so I don't think it would matter that much.

Nah it's alright. I think Garry is being a twat about the issues he has with the forum, sure they may be his forums but they would be nothing if it wasn't for us. This isn't to say that he should be beholden to us for posting and keeping the place alive but he should realize that removing the forum or making knee-jerk changes can impact other people in a negative way. If he doesn't care about that then in my honest opinion he is being a bit of a twat.

The title is a bit harsh, but definitely eye-catching. I clicked it expecting a shitpost, but actually reading through your op, I found myself agreeing with a few points.

healthy reminder that this is EXACTLY what garry wants you to do, so he can justify shuttering the forums every day we stray further from god

Ah yes lets coddle him and erect a feelings shield so we dont upset poor garry. Thats fucking stupid, Garry is an adult and if he doesnt want the responsibility of having a forum full of people dedicated to his games he can just pull the plug, but he will lose a tonne of people who put a lot of work into his games and participate in his forums. Garry is a being a twat, no two ways about it, because to him this forum can just be replaced by reddit.

So, I get to throw my two cents in. I browse more than how much I used to post. Don't let this account fool you, I've been a member for 13 years. But I was a dumb kid who made "lol xd so randum" comics back when there was a comics section for Gmod. Dark days. Some days I took a ponder as to when FP may end, but man this is still a shock that the possibility is there. I'm not gonna go ahead and openly insult Garry and give ammo or something to cherrypick as why it's not a bad idea to close the forums but I'll just say what I have in mind while reading the OP instead of simply posting "yeah lol insult garry good idea." Obviously, things have changed in a decade. 13 years ago I don't think I remember Reddit being as popular and used as it is today, and obviously Discord wasn't exactly a thing. Back then existed things such as Digg, Delicious, Fark.. nothing quite as a hit as Reddit became to be. I was a dumb 11 year old kid who learned about Garry's Mod from an episode of Attack On The Show, back when it was Gmod 9 and it was a mod instead of a standalone title to buy on Steam. So I got that, was curious about Facepunch and joined to make god-awful, horribly unfunny comics made in Gmod and shared them and was quite butthurt about people not liking them. I digress though. Point I was trying to reach was I initially joined FP just because of Garry's Mod, perhaps not too different from how later on Rust users joined to make your standard, low quality question thread before disappearing and never coming back. Some did stay though, and it's because FP is a pretty neat community itself and there are so many things I discovered, learned and developed an interest in because of that. It'd be a damn shame to lose that; sure, there are Discords and subreddits but I don't feel that they can create that same sense of community that this forum does. Discord is, from what I know from a couple years of using it, usually akin to like IRC with channels and whatnot but mainly disorganized and subreddits are obviously to serve a certain niche/interest. I just don't think r/facepunch would work out well. For Newpunch, I think we're all, if not a good proportion of us, disgruntled by the changes. I don't think I'm the first one to say vBulletin was/is a mess with several vulnerabilities and change needed to be done. Change isn't inherently bad but it's important to enact change responsibly which I don't necessarily believe Garry did, especially so with the recent removals of several sections of the forum. And then just simply stating "thinking about shutting the forums" is obviously gonna spark something into those that feel like FP is a home of sorts and are passionate about the place. And even though I entirely disagree with his thought process on this, I don't think plainly insulting him helps anybody at all and just makes him sigh and go "Yeah, this is why."