I sometimes, every few years or so, decide to check up on the NTG crowd.

What a blast from the past, It's already been 9 years. Next year will be 10 for me. Counting 2014 as the year i started playing on NTG.

Seeing all the familiar names sorta makes me feel like my hair is turning gray and falling out as we speak.

Ive been meaning to stop by sometime, I might. Anyway. Everyone I remember, the idiot crowd. The Classic "2014 benelli enjoyers" from back in the day. The shinigami connoseurs, the days when you had to buy regen bubble and whatnot.
U guys are still the best! Even if I was a huge idiot back then. rock on guys.

I really do miss being a 15 year old and booting up NTG at 7 in the morning, seeing if my friends were on. I thought the funniest thing in the entire world was going onto the NTG forums and shitposting horrible weapon suggestions. Making stupid, awful off topic posts and checking them during school. Now I'm old and work. I dont think we appreciate those times where these places exist, because ive had so many gaming communities fall apart as years go by. Cool to see this place is still around, even just to dig in the old forum messages.

Anyways, hi.

Buckle up, this is a long post.

Shaking things up
The next seasonal shakes up the typical FRG Seasonal formula. Normally, a seasonal update contains a new device, new 'shard' type item to use in the device, a new gift package type 'reward', the new main seasonal crate, and the 'crate within a crate' (christmas crackers, plastic eggs, etc).

This is a great formula, and was forged over the years by new innovations and community feedback, it worked well. But... without varying from it too much for the last ~4 years, the normal loop has grown quite stale.  Before I continue, I think it's important to discuss what happened with Christmas.

The Christmas blunder
With Christmas, I tried to combat this a bit by introducing the Christmas Spirit bar, seasonal tasks, and more server-wide rewards. This was cool, most were received well, but we saw an overabundance of the main present, which in turn caused a lot of people to not need to buy any presents with coins. Seasonals are usually a great economic time for our community, as there's a need for coins to open the main series, so it gets coins circulating and flowing while removing them from the system as well.
This results in much higher trading activity than normal, and generally just makes coins feel better to have.

When you don't have to spend coins to mass open the new series, this structure collapses.  So, what went wrong?
Presents were being rewarded at a much, much higher rate than prior seasonals. I caught it too late unfortunately, so the damage was done. When I fixed one portion of it, lots of people felt under rewarded, which is not what I want to happen at all.

I also focused a lot more on making this present cooler than prior ones, which in turn made the pass suffer a bit as well and feel generally less re-playable. The pass was also the easiest to level by far due to the new tasks, and primeval coins. This all just led to there being 80 concurrent players, but only ~10 on TTT while the rest were afk opening presents because they had already flown through their pass and accumulated 10s of thousands of presents during that short time.

You might be thinking that straying from the formula is risky, well typically it isn't. Every feature we have during a seasonal resulted from some variant of a previous system that in of itself at one point was a brand new introduction to a seasonal. The pass for instance stems directly from the original "Abyssal Energy" system. Prior to that we had no seasonal passes, just a new crate, minigame, and sometimes a quest or boss fight.

I LOVE trying new things, new systems, and new mechanics. I have started to dread working on seasonals entirely because I have fallen into a pattern. I know what I have to do, despite having to make all new items. It has just become very dull for someone like me who likes to branch out creatively and try new things. I rarely let risk stop me from trying new things. Christmas was the first seasonal in all of FRG's life that I feel I've blundered. I wasted a good opportunity to gauge all these new systems because of some minor reward balancing mistakes.

The Road Ahead
Where does that leave us for the future?

Well, I started evaluating the issues from the prior seasonal, how to remedy them, then the issues that arise from potential fixes.  You see, the main solution to the main issue last seasonal was to lower the amount of presents players obtained without spending coins. Pretty obvious, right? But that can feel bad when the bulk of the rewards you get without spending coins aren't that interesting.  Making players feel under rewarded for their time. That is no good.

Then I looked at the typical loop from a player, all of the different UI's they have to go through, the devices they have to manage, the 'gift package' type items they have to deal with, how the "shards" feel meh, and how getting a base tier 20 item feels for the 3rd time. The baseline reward for playing should feel better, more like you're working towards something. It shouldn't just be a vessel to obtain the primary seasonal crate.

All of these things were considered when I decided on what changes I would be making to the seasonal.  I wont be going into specific details about a lot of the core changes(though I may hint at some as the update approaches launch), to keep things more exciting when it launches, but I am excited to work on a seasonal for the first time in years. It's been great, progress has been very good, and there's really good suggestions this year from the community too!

I will end this by saying I just thought I should give you guys a heads up on things potentially changing, so you're just a little more aware and potentially more accepting of the upcoming changes. Oh also: There will not be any godlike or exotic pass rewards for this seasonal pass. They will instead be primordial (tier 20 will have some visual stuff to make it feel more special still), as a result the soft xp cap will be removed.

Hey FRG its LMAN coming back with my 2nd installment into the FRG community frg_tdm_castle. THIS MAP WILL COME OUT WITH THE RELEASE OF THE TDM GAMEMODE

This map features cool visuals, close, mid, long range combat, and BOOST PAD INFILTRATION!!! (THANKS PARADE FOR BOOST PADS AND CASTLE ASSETS )

The map in terms of optimization lighting and visuals this is without a doubt my best work yet and its easily gonna get better this raises a new bar to my standards on map making.



To The Black Parade, BrassX, and the Community. I've learned so much about source mapping and how it works and for the past 2.5 years I've easily improved from what you taught me even with helping on fixing optimizing this map too!!! Brass your coding has stunned me and gotten me so intrested into coding with lua trying to get just as good as you because it looks like you can make anything crazy right off of your fingertips. With the guns, events, and items its flipping awesome keep it up brotha. Community you have ups and downs at times but mainly ups. You guys, YOU are cool and what help keep this cool server thriving and active. I wanna keep making maps for you guys to enjoy and if anything that is either a map error/mistake let me know at any time I will try to fix it ASAP also send me any suggestions I'm down for some because I cant always be thinking of what potentially be the next biggest project. To all of you... Thanks.

• The map has been made in a linear fashion. Players are provided with 7 unlockable courses containing 3 Chambers each. At the end of the course you will receive a chest. These Chambers are made with Lives like Agony. You have a limited number of lives before you are sent back to Chamber 1.
• Water Treatment Beacons are not physical items but rather they are displayed on your screen. They can be collected first time from any chest. Checkpoints are purely to unlock new courses.
• There are 42 Gems to collect throughout the map.
• Trials are unlocked by completing the course for that Trial first.
• Water Treatment: Chambers can be entirely solo'd. Players are allowed to help others however or wherever they can (with the exception of Trials).
  

I've been made aware that it's a bit difficult to find info on some of the interesting current and future projects I am working on, and their schedulings,  so I figured I'd make a post to indicate some stuff that is going on behind the scenes, and talk about some experimental changes I want to try on TTT. Do note - this list does not include the obvious seasonal events, cosmic bosses, or other smaller updates, those are to be expected. These are things that I've discussed in discord but not actually made any official statements about them.



Water Treatment Chambers
This is what I am currently working on. WTC is a standalone "parkour" and "jump puzzle" map, made by parade (coded by me).  I hope to release this later today, or tomorrow. You can read more about it in parade's thread here.


FRG TDM
I have commissioned Twentysix to develop a 'bare bones' TDM mode we can use to test out how an FRG TDM server would play out.

On FRG TDM all traits will be dampened pretty heavily. Players will have 'shields' that regenerate after a few seconds of not taking damage. Players can not have traits proc on them or die until their shields are depleted. Very similar to Halo style shields. The exact shield amounts and hp amounts have yet to be decided, and will be decided during the play tests (we will see what feels best).

We will be trialing this to see if it's fun. If it's fun it will probably stick around, if it proves fun enough I will add scroll progression and dailies to it.


FRG Survive 2 (working title)

Survive 2 has been delayed numerous times. I'm sure a lot of you are wondering why. Well I will outline exactly why, and why it's actually a positive thing.

At first survive 2 was supposed to just be... Survive 2. Pretty simple really - New map, new zombies, and a way to end the run via a boss fight. As you may know by now, when parade and I get passionate about something, we get a little ambitious and like to push the boundaries. This has caused Survive 2 to turn into so much more than just a sequel.  

Survive 2 is a rogue-like lite mode that is nearly entirely modular and supports multiple maps, and the way I have set it up allows every map to completely change how the mode functions. On top of that I made a web-based control panel we can use to tweak each maps cfg settings.

The core 'rogue-like' elements are presented to you in the form of upgrading weapons. When you spawn in, you will be able to choose one primary and one secondary weapon from a number of options presented to you.

Once you do that, you can upgrade each weapons stats via 'stat stations'. Fully upgrading a weapons stats will bump it up to the next rarity class (i.e. Rare -> Legendary). This serves 2 purposes; 1. It allows you access to more and better stats, making your weapon deal more DPS, and 2. It allows more trait slots and access to better traits.

You add traits to your guns via 'trait stations'. These will list a number of random traits on them, and their requirements to unlock. You will just select the one you want and it'll apply to your weapon!

There will be some really nutty builds you'll be able to do, which adds to replay-ability and the overall fun factor of the event.

That's just a couple bits of info about the event, and while it was definitely scope-crept(much like Tribulation was), I think it will be a better event because of that. I apologize for all the delays, but let me remind you that I am just one person and can't do everything at once!  I would rather delay something and have it be as good as it can be, than rush out something unfinished.

I plan to get back to work on this post-easter, but I am in no rush personally.


FRG Slayer

FRG Slayer is a fairly simple new persistent PVE mode I want to start developing this year. FRG Slayer will be a way to progress through things like the bm pass without needing to rely on other players to be online. The mode will focus on completing 'slayer tasks', which are assigned to you via an npc on the lobby. You will get a slayer task (which is kill x mobs), then be able to join the pve server and seek out the monsters and slay them. Completing a task will grant xp to all applicable sources, on top of slayer XP. Your Slayer Level will be used to determine what monsters you can actually fight and damage. This also includes a new series of bosses I will be making, that have unique loot. These bosses are still much to be decided, but definitely will need specific slayer levels to fight them properly (might even have rare boss slayer tasks).


FRG Boss Rush

That's right, FRG Boss Rush is still on the table. A few months ago I made some significant progress with player skill trees, it made things a lot more interesting and is one more step in the right direction.

BR needs more bosses, and unique loot to self sustain. But I definitely want to work on it over the summer.


Those are some of the main projects I want to work on this year. I don't know if I will accomplish all my goals this year, but I hope to.

Steam Name (Current): Curly Jefferson

Steam Name (During incident): Curly Jefferson

Steam ID: STEAM_0:0:32070437

Steam Profile Link: https://steamcommunity.com/id/Satireiscoolyo/

Name of staff you were banned by: I don't know

Length of the ban: Permanent

Would you like your ban shortened or repealed?: Anything beside Permanent

Reason for ban: I said the N word in chat

Did you commit the actions stated in the ban reason?: Yes

What really happened?: All I did was say "I'm gonna say something Racist" and then the N word in chat and got permanently banned I think that's kind of harsh

Additional details:

Age:26

Steam Name(Current):Gerumon

Time played on servers?(!time username to check): 320hours 33mins on TTT
225 hours 26 mins on lobby

Where did you hear about this server?:known about it since brass launched when he left ntg

Have you ever been banned and why?:no i have not

Why do you want to join?:figured it was about time i went from a regular to a member

Referred by:no one

Additional Details: played on frg for years but never played enough for a member app on alot more now so figured i may as well go for it

i wanna play frg ttt again, i miss it. you probably knew me as celery god, if that name rings a bell. it's been long enough and enough about me has changed since I last touched frg that I felt like I could use a reintroduction. i can't wait to play ttt with the people in the computer yay

also to the people who remember playing w/ celery god, thanks for being so cool to me on frg over the years, you guys are great.

Steam Name of Offending Player(s):SadFatDegenerate

Steam ID of Offending Player(s): STEAM_0:0:533519317

Map the event happened on: space station

Date of event: 25Jan2023

What Happened?: killed SadFatDegenerate on his t round after watching him us a t weapon then the next round he killed me on round start

Witnesses: no one saw him kill me but i have a clip of it

Evidence: clip of him revenge rdming me and a screenshot asking him why he killed me and he said cause i wanted to