I didn't leave the discord, someone either kicked me or banned me, but I don't have any invite and therefore can't join back.
That said, however, I will be attempting to launch another TF:R:R. My reasoning for this is primarily because I've always loved the server and the community, and while there are certain bad people and I understand why you'd shut this down, I've been admin in significantly worse communities where they were practically cancer, yet have managed to moderate them (although left because I personally began to feel uninterested in them, but in terms of mentally affecting me - not really).
The main thing you have to remember when building a server, is it has to adapt to the community. If it can't adapt, it will fail. If the community itself has bad actors, you will have to moderate it, and find ways to do that.
The server also has to not feel like a chore, because once that happens - there is no more fun. In its current state (or, well, I guess past state, now that it's shutting down), TotalFreedom is basically a creative server, and a lot of these servers have died out, because there isn't really a goal for people, you basically just do whatever. The Minecraft community fundamentally has changed - before, people were much more likely to play creative servers. Now, a significant portion of the Minecraft multiplayer playerbase will play on servers like Hypixel, which are practically monopolies, and so many servers have died out, which had a similar premise - even Mineplex, Hypixel's main competitor.
TotalFreedom was one of the first Minecraft multiplayer servers I have ever joined, and it remains a big reason for why I'm still playing the game and have been for over a decade now. There are very few servers like TotalFreedom anymore, and it honestly sucks. I've suggested many things to TotalFreedom, but a very small amount of them ever got added or went into consideration. Most of the reasoning for declining these suggestions was "this isn't the soul of totalfreedom" and etc., but the problem is - the server had to adapt to the community. People quickly begin losing interest when their suggestions aren't implemented, and when their actual idea of fun changes, the server doesn't adapt.
I think it is reasonable to assume that one of the biggest reasons for TotalFreedom's downfall is the lack of any funding. Everyone is a volunteer, and because of this, people have to spend significant portions of their time working on the server, while getting nothing from it. Something I suggested earlier was OpenCollective, where people could donate money directly to TotalFreedom, and this could be used for hosting, but it isn't exactly a sustainable model. What would be slightly more sustainable is some form of ranks, and while I understand this goes against the core of TotalFreedom, these ranks would really only give you certain features that are more expensive to run - I remember things like per-user-worlds being suggested. The ranks wouldn't be insanely expensive, maybe just one rank that would grant you this type of stuff (something like 5$/mo or possibly less, depending on how expensive it is to run), which would make the server more sustainable, and players would have a way to fund it.
In terms of goal for the player, I feel like it would be interesting if there was more to do on the server. One of the things I suggested was Events, but they barely got implemented, and most events were either very unmanaged and felt very hacky, or it's just that there weren't many of them. What I meant was mostly custom games that people could join, I'm working on an Events plugin for player-hosted events, and I've actually already made a few custom games that are pretty fun. If you ever managed to somehow get invited to one of my private servers, you already got to see SlimeWars (although this game was initially implemented with command blocks). It is similar to spleef, but it uses slime blocks for the platforms. Upon spawning in one of the 8 platforms and waiting for the timer to count down, you can run to the center, where there are 10 double chests. You can get slime blocks as fast as possible, and after adventure mode gets turned off, start to get the players to the last water platform, where they die. You can use the blocks to your advantage to parkour around holes, block the other player - it's your imagination. The game is fairly simple, but many people have tested it so far, and it's an absolute blast. Oh, and being able to hit the other players is fully intentional.
There's also some games I recreated, like the classic Sumo duel game, where you have to punch the other player off the map. I've actually been interested in possibly making some framework for easily creating games like this, where players could write the entire game in something like a .mcfunction file, and have the entire map simply spawn in this way. It wouldn't require worlds being stored, as they can be deleted, if the game is not being played, and it would allow for the games to be more dynamic. These scripts may be possible to store in pastebin (or something similar), and load them from there.
I always miss the old days of TotalFreedom, where people used to always duel with OP items and there were entire arenas for this type of stuff, but now that Mojang has mostly killed off OP items, there isn't much to do on the server anymore. It's basically just a creative server. I've seen the insane stuff that people can build, and honestly, I have always felt like TotalFreedom simply never enabled these people to make something more interesting, like a game, which everyone can play.
TotalFreedom lost the freedom it once had, and I miss it.
7 years of me causing mayhem and drama on and off, all for self entertainment. Never really wanted to see this place go, but I guess all good things have to come to an end.
DDDDD
