[BB], 2019 in review

Discussion in 'Blog Posts' started by Teddi, Dec 31, 2019.

  1. Teddi

    Teddi Well-Known Member Bear

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    Blog Post

    The end of the year and decade is upon us. Here's to a greater 2020!
     
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  2. Kaiden

    Kaiden Administrator Community Manager

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    Great wrapup, always good to reflect on what we've achieved in the past 1-2 years, and it's a lot. Some aspects I saw not mentioned which I feel are milestones are our new, complex chatbox and the races feature with groups.

    It's easy to forget features once they're in, but we've added 20+ new maps (we did a big shakeup in removing 5 maps and adding 5 maps in April this year alone), around 15 new unusual effects, 20 new flashlight noises (along with its own equip slot), quicksave feature, a bunch of new player models (Overwatch invasion), /extend and plenty more in terms of content. We also saw the biggest overhaul of our Holiday Events in years, with new items dotting our festive and spoopy crates.

    We made a significant change in the summer in that AFK players would no longer be kicked after 5 minutes; I always felt this was a bit harsh, and we instead added so RTV and MVP votes would ignore AFK players, which was a great piece of work by Teddi. Once players were no longer being kicked, we saw a significant increase in players joining - players are more likely to join a server with players already connected, to the point where we saw other server's player-bases diminish and ultimately close their doors.

    Garry's Mod is now a 13 year old game (with BB not much younger), it's both a testament to our community and Gmod as a whole that it's continued for so long. I agree the next 2 years will most likely be a turning point, for those old enough to remember Gamespy, sadly one dayIGN shut down their many Master-serversthat powered multiplayer for older games like Quake and Unreal Tournament, which was the decider of their fate. I expect such a decision will also occur with Garry's mod one day, but as you reflected at the bottom of your blog, our community is healthy, we have a revolving door of new players, active discussions and regular, returning players. Whilst we have those we'll continue to provide BB for as long as possible.

    It was December 2015 when we saw Surf become massively popular, and it's amazing to see how many unique connections we're still getting each day, week and month 4 years on. I feel it's a testament to the experience we provide, and can only thank Killermon and Teddi for giving up so much of their time applying professional developing to what is in it's entirety an unpaid hobby.
     
    Last edited: Dec 31, 2019
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