Argonath RPG - A World of its own

GTA:SA => SA:MP - San Andreas Multiplayer => SA:MP General => Topic started by: Nathan on June 09, 2022, 05:56:43 pm

Title: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Nathan on June 09, 2022, 05:56:43 pm
Another one of these topics?

We had several of these topics, and most likely, they won't stop because they are not being addressed. Every single person who wants to see the community grow has been ignored or, worse, provided a ton of excuses or even finger-pointing/wagging. Some leaders have taken a step further and just go straight to name-calling (ad hominem fallacy), which means they automatically lost their debate. It's got to stop.

I wanted to sit and think through a plan to get things in order. I brought up similar points in the past before. Now, I wanted to think through them, formulate a concrete point of view and ask.

Why?

I joined Argonath in May of 2009. I went through various CnR servers, and then I randomly stumbled across Argonath. When I joined, Cutt3r was the very first person who helped me. He walked me through the basics of the server, did a quick RP, and then I was on my way. Since then, I have been hooked. I spent that summer playing SA:MP on a very crappy HP laptop that barely ran SA:MP in 1024x768.

As the story goes, I went through various stages of the community. I became a moderator and then admin. Contrary to certain leaders' opinions, this was before I had any money donated, and it was purely because I was helpful to the community. I was community-banned three or four times for various reasons. I made several enemies and a couple of friends. Long story short, I've been here long enough to understand what happens when things go right and wrong.

I genuinely want this community to grow and flourish. I want this community to have hundreds of players on various servers. I genuinely want this community to succeed.

What I don't want is to be ignored or, worse, harassed. I don't want excuses. I don't want "we're working on it". I just want the best for this community.

We're about to launch several new servers; you just need to wait.

We have a bigger problem: the bedrock/foundation of the community. I fundamentally believe that if the foundation is not fixed, no other efforts will result in meaningful results. It doesn't matter if we launch 10+ servers when we have a failed foundation. It doesn't matter if we hire the best developers, and write the most amazing scripts; if the foundation is broken, things will fail.

At the end of the day, putting lipstick on a pig doesn't solve the problems. It's still a pig, no matter its shade or makeup.

I believe we need to refocus from launching new servers to actually focusing on building a solid foundation.

I wanted to lay it out in three simple to understand points with details on how I believe we solve the issues. These are my own beliefs and are based on feedback that I gathered. I am open to having things changed or modified. I am open to debate and to be challenged.

So, how do we actually build a solid foundation?

Active, Transparent, Accountable Leadership

First, changes must start at the top. Leadership must be active, transparent, and accountable for their actions. Who is part of the leadership? This spans from CLs down to moderators. Everyone with a rank should be considered a leader and represent the community.

Active

Good leadership is an active one. By active, I mean involved in the server's life and the community. Take SA:MP as an example: the top activity is held by three non-staff members. I am one of them. I even experimented, I logged in for 12+ hours, and not a single staff member logged in. Not a single community leader or senior admin, or really anyone else in sight. The players have given up on the server. The leadership isn't helping either by not being active.

Sometimes, real-life happens. Hell, even for me, there are times when I get so busy that I don't check Discord for days. But it's no excuse to be a benchwarmer and hold on to a rank if you have no intention of being active and available on the server.

Each member of the leadership should put in at least an hour (60 minutes) per month. If they can't do that, they shouldn't hold their rank and should be removed. Simple as that.

Transparent

Over the last decade, we had a complete breakdown of communication. As Cutt3r put it nicely, "if communication breaks down, everything fails". Decisions have been made in closed rooms for us. HQ continually keeps saying they are listening, but the reality is that no actions are visible on the outside. We're just getting one-sentence answers that some progress is happening.

Instead, we should enforce a culture of radical transparency. As actions are decided, they should be brought up to the community. Not for a vote but just to clearly show that progress is being made and how the HQ thinks about things. I believe that providing more data and information gives better context to everyone, especially those who actually care and want the best for the community.

Often, I find myself bringing up points only to have them refuted by leadership. For example, I asked Badandy about the status of the MTA:SA server, and I was shown a screenshot of 20-something pages. My assumption is that they just spent three weeks writing a plan that only HQ can approve of instead of actually working on bringing the new server up. I shouldn't have to pull teeth to ask for this information. Instead, leadership should consistently show what progress is being made, if any.

Accountable

Mistakes happen. Deadlines are missed. Some decisions that are made are inadequate. The leadership needs to start owning up to it and being accountable for how they plan to resolve issues. I'm not talking about apologizing all the time, but instead being accountable and owning up. Not a single leader ever apologized for past behavior - yet it's expected from players when they make a mistake.

Acknowledge mistakes. Own up to them. And then be accountable for resolving them.

Continuous Iteration & Experimentation

Any successful organization, whether it be a community or a company, is one that continuously looks for improvements and continuously experiments with various ideas. We must embrace a culture of change and adaptation if we want to survive.

Continuous Iteration

One of the common mistakes a lot of organizations and servers fall into is thinking that they should continuously deliver major features. Over time, this will result in burnout from the developers who are doing this voluntarily.

Instead, we should encourage developers to release updates and fixes often instead of bundling them together in one mega update. In software development terms - it's about waterfall vs. agile methodologies.

In waterfall, it's linear, and everything is pre-planned. There is no flexibility. This means that every single aspect of the release needs to be 100% clearly defined. The reality is that when building software, whether game servers or applications, waterfall methodology quickly breaks down because objectives and deliverables often change.

In agile, it's more fluid. It allows short-term deadlines and allows flexibility. It's not as rigid, and things can change - as long as everyone is on the same page. This allows for fixes to be released sooner and gives the players an impression that changes/fixes happen quickly.

If we embrace a culture of change, everybody wins.

Experimentation

Doing things as they have always been done and expecting different results is insanity. Over the last ten years, we squandered many opportunities that existed. We could have launched sooner on other game servers. We could have embraced specific trends. But instead, the current leadership only rules in an autocratic way, which doesn't work.

We should embrace experimentation. Try out new game modes and potentially move away from just being an RPG community. If we rapidly try out new modes and servers, we can quickly see what sticks and what gets the community to grow.


Community Building & Direction

In the end, the most critical aspect we should focus on is community building and direction.

One of the enormous opportunities we're squandering right now is thinking purely of separate, segmented servers, which in their own end up being their own "mini" communities. This is a major issue as it means the community is fractured into several pieces. This means that each leader is moving/pulling in their own directions and vision. This means that players who join Argonath not only just have different experiences depending on which server they go to, but different leadership styles/enforcement of rules, and different realities. This results in rifts being created between each server and no desire for players to play on various servers.

Community Building

We should have a strong focus on community building. We should encourage all new and old players to be actively involved in the community and not just in the game server that's most favorable to them. As an example, we used to have more involvement on the forums, and now, most of the topics are about SA games and a little bit on III:MP.

A strong community is built by leaders who encourage communication, feedback, and motivation in others and only want the best for the players they lead. A healthy community does not have communication breakdowns and opaque decision-making.

Every single member of the leadership should have the same mission and goal - constantly improving the community and leaving the place better than when they found it.

Community Direction

On the final note, I wanted to bring up one of the most significant issues that need to be solved, which is community direction. Right now, we're essentially sitting in a ship without a captain and without a rudder or a sense of where we are going and who are trying to be. We have several servers being pulled in various directions without any clear indication on where they should be heading.

What makes any community successful is knowing exactly where we are and knowing exactly where we are going. In the past, we had the "Argonath Vision" - which was flawed but did set a framework for us to follow up. I would love to have the same community experience in every Argonath server in the ideal world.



Final notes:

I'm tired of having to be part of these discussions. But it stems from the fact that I feel we lost our way and that the current leadership is no longer listening and providing no results. We had several players try to initiate and be the "change they want to see," but I feel it should also stem from the leadership.

I promised myself that this would be the last time I open up and participate in these discussions. I'm sick and tired of having to repeat the points over and over again. Often, a single line gets taken out of context, and the whole point gets missed.

I perhaps made some mistakes in the above points, but this is again after thinking about this a lot. I want this framework to be a guideline that someone builds on top of, iterates, and improves.



Update: I decided to restore the original letter because I believe it sets a good framework for how things should be done. I am still taking a break from this community and therefore do not want to continue discussions.
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: Cutt3r on June 09, 2022, 07:28:45 pm
Hopefully something good will come out of these discussions. I think you have explained the points well.

We should all let bygones be bygones. I say this not directed at anyone specifically but I have seen topics made where discussions go awry because something may have probably happened in the past between those concerned. We all want Argonath to be a successful, thriving community across servers. We may put our thoughts differently but let's please keep our discussion respectful  :janek:

If we can't agree with someone let's just agree to disagree and leave it there.

EDIT: I think Badandy is happy to share progress on the MTASA server with anyone interested on Discord, that's a good step in the right direction. Thanks!
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: Hammer_ on June 09, 2022, 08:03:03 pm
Everything from the start to the finish is correct, when SA:MP Argo's playerbase fell, it was because there was lack of leadership activity(not talking about all the managers), and the server in competition of ours had new updates releasing week in week out, and it still does. What did we have? Whenever suggestions were made, they were just ignored. I stand by your points for the very first time in my life, imo.
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: Mario_Rinna on June 10, 2022, 10:25:37 am
Every single person who wants to see the community grow has been ignored or, worse,
I personally haven't been ignored, so you are incorrect.

provided a ton of excuses or even finger-pointing/wagging. Some leaders have taken a step further and just go straight to name-calling (ad hominem fallacy),
The name-calling isn't a fallacy when it's just that – name-calling, and not justification for an argument of some kind.

which means they automatically lost their debate. It's got to stop.
So you are a side in the debate and the moderator in it at the same time. How very autocratic of you.

When I joined, Cutt3r was the very first person who helped me. He walked me through the basics of the server, did a quick RP, and
...and he's been suffering from bad karma ever since. :(

I was helpful to the community. I was community-banned three or four times for various reasons.
Yes, being community banned (THREE TIMES? FOUR?) is very helpful to the community.

I made several enemies
The willingness to declare some random dude online an enemy reveals a lot about you.

I genuinely want this community to grow and flourish. I want this community to have hundreds of players on various servers. I genuinely want this community to succeed.
There is no reason to believe this instead of your track record..

What I don't want is to be ignored or, worse, harassed. I don't want excuses. I don't want "we're working on it".
You don't seem to care about what anyone else wants or doesn't want. Why should your wants take priority?

I just want the best for this community.
Who elected you as its representative?

We have a bigger problem:
Not we, you.

It doesn't matter if we launch 10+ servers
We again? And where's your contribution to this?

when we have a failed foundation. It doesn't matter if we hire the best developers, and write the most amazing scripts; if the foundation is broken, things will fail.
You don't have the rank or the experience to make these judgments. "I've been watching for a long time" doesn't qualify you to make them.

I am open to debate and to be challenged.
Let's see if this is true.

Leadership must be active, transparent, and accountable for their actions.
They do not owe you any of this.

I am one of them. I even experimented, I logged in for 12+ hours, and not a single staff member logged in. Not a single community leader or senior admin, or really anyone else in sight.
When I think of it, I wouldn't want to log into a server with you alone in it either. Have you considered your own attitude being the problem? I mean, if you're always alone, then you probably don't have any friends, and whose fault is that? :neutral2:

The leadership isn't helping either by not being active.
If they're working on a new game-mode, then it's understandable that "supporting" an empty server is not exactly a priority, as that drains resources into a trash bin. Especially if the new mode is significantly different from the abandoned one, and here it's probably the case, given how even the platform is different.

Sometimes, real-life happens. Hell, even for me, there are times when I get so busy that I don't check Discord for days. But it's no excuse to be a benchwarmer and hold on to a rank if you have no intention of being active and available on the server.
Evidence of intentions where?

First of all, there's not exactly a flow of volunteer devs here. There wasn't one even back when the server was full.

Second of all, there is no reason to "fire" someone because of their inactivity – it's not like there is finite amount of ranks. The structure can be easily stretched.

Third of all, it's not very polite to call people "benchwarmers," when all of them have contributed more to this community than you ever will. What do you bring to the table to assign people labels or make demands of any kind? Rants?

Each member of the leadership should put in at least an hour (60 minutes) per month. If they can't do that, they shouldn't hold their rank and should be removed.
Again, it's not your place to make these demands, I'll just save us all some time and not respond to each and every one.

Over the last decade, we had a complete breakdown of communication.
To have a breakdown, it had to have been there in the first place.

Decisions have been made in closed rooms for us.
It's how things work. The HQ should change the way it operates for... what? For your personal preference? C'mon, bruh.

HQ continually keeps saying they are listening, but the reality is that no actions are visible on the outside. We're just getting one-sentence answers that some progress is happening.

Instead, we should enforce a culture of radical transparency. As actions are decided, they should be brought up to the community. Not for a vote but just to clearly show that progress is being made and how the HQ thinks about things. I believe that providing more data and information gives better context to everyone, especially those who actually care and want the best for the community.

Often, I find myself bringing up points only to have them refuted by leadership. For example, I asked Badandy about the status of the MTA:SA server, and I was shown a screenshot of 20-something pages. My assumption is that they just spent three weeks writing a plan that only HQ can approve of instead of actually working on bringing the new server up. I shouldn't have to pull teeth to ask for this information. Instead, leadership should consistently show what progress is being made, if any.
You want to see what? The draft of an unfinished game-mode? Code? :lol:

Accountable

Mistakes happen. Deadlines are missed. Some decisions that are made are inadequate. The leadership needs to start owning up to it and being accountable for how they plan to resolve issues. I'm not talking about apologizing all the time, but instead being accountable and owning up. Not a single leader ever apologized for past behavior - yet it's expected from players when they make a mistake.

Acknowledge mistakes. Own up to them. And then be accountable for resolving them.
I agree. Let's start with an investigation into how you were allowed to walk away from 3-4 community bans. Who unbanned you and why wasn't that a mistake? This is what I would like to know. :strong:

Imagine making a bazillion of owner-level demands to the devs instead of simply being grateful for them tolerating your nonsense and allowing you to return.

Any successful organization,
Here's another one for your list of fallacies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

Over time, this will result in burnout from the developers who are doing this voluntarily.
No, devs burn out and quit because of topics like this.

But instead, the current leadership only rules in an autocratic way, which doesn't work.
Complete nonsense. An autocrat rules alone. Who's the autocrat here, if there's more than 1 person in HQ?


We should embrace experimentation.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)


Try out new game modes and potentially move away from just being an RPG community. If we rapidly try out new modes and servers, we can quickly see what sticks and what gets the community to grow.
Why not make your own community if you want to change _everything_ about this place?

New game-modes? Who's going to make all of that? Badandy? 1 guy? RAPIDLY?  :rofl:


One of the enormous opportunities we're squandering right now is thinking purely of separate, segmented servers, which in their own end up being their own "mini" communities. This is a major issue as it means the community is fractured into several pieces.
Diversity an advantage, not a problem.


This means that players who join Argonath not only just have different experiences depending on which server they go to, but different leadership styles/enforcement of rules, and different realities.
Which is what made this place great, as having the same server on every platform is just a 0 iq move.


This results in rifts being created between each server
No, it assigns people their own areas of responsibility.


and no desire for players to play on various servers.
This results in the ability for community members to choose what they like and allows the community to provide different experiences.


Community Building

We should have a strong focus on community building. We should encourage all new and old players to be actively involved in the community and not just in the game server that's most favorable to them. As an example, we used to have more involvement on the forums, and now, most of the topics are about SA games and a little bit on III:MP.

A strong community is built by leaders who encourage communication, feedback, and motivation in others and only want the best for the players they lead. A healthy community does not have communication breakdowns and opaque decision-making.

Every single member of the leadership should have the same mission and goal - constantly improving the community and leaving the place better than when they found it.

Community Direction

On the final note, I wanted to bring up one of the most significant issues that need to be solved, which is community direction.

You are deciding this based on what? Based on how you feel?


Right now, we're essentially sitting in a ship without a captain and without a rudder or a sense of where we are going and who are trying to be. We have several servers being pulled in various directions without any clear indication on where they should be heading.
Opinion—like most of your post—presented as fact.

It's not a ship, it's a fleet.


 sitting in a ship without a captain
A captain, by the way, fits perfectly the very definition of an autocrat. You want a captain? I thought you were trying to not have one? I'm sorry, man, my head's going to explode. :rolleyes:


In the past, we had the "Argonath Vision" - which was
...an irrelevant and outdated post taken out of context by people who could not even comprehend its meaning.


I would love to have the same community experience in every Argonath server in the ideal world.
I would love to NOT have the same community experience in every Argonath server because copycat servers don't have a reason to exist.


Final notes:

I'm tired of having to be part of these discussions. But it stems from the fact that I feel we lost our way and that the current leadership is no longer listening and providing no results. We had several players try to initiate and be the "change they want to see," with failing results. Instead, I feel it should also stem from the leadership.

I promised myself that this would be the last time I open up and participate in these discussions. I'm sick and tired of having to repeat the points over and over again. Often, a single line gets taken out of context, and the whole point gets missed.

I perhaps made some mistakes in the above points, but this is again after thinking about this a lot. I want this framework to be a guideline that someone builds on top of, iterates, and improves.

For a player, you are fighting in a wRONg and counter-productive direction. Not only that, you contradict yourself.

You want a leader with control over everything and yet, at the same time, one of your key "problems" is that things are too autocratic (even though that's impossible since autocracy is rule by ONE). I think I've almost had a stroke just writing this.

It's 2022, and you still have a dev willing to make something for you, and instead of going to suggestions & ideas board, writing up some ideas about what you'd want to see in your "perfect server", details on scripts, mods, game mechanics, etc., you do what? Demand HQ to change its structure for your personal amusement? That's what's important to you? You want "meaningful results", but you present meaningless, vague ideas.

When it comes to autocratic leadership, you have no idea what it is. If there were an autocrat here, you would have his boot far up your butt already – for criticism, etc. The fact that your post is here, out in the open, disproves the existence of autocracy.  :cowboy:

tl;dr the music's too sad and cringe :bore:
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: JayL on June 10, 2022, 12:34:51 pm
Often, I find myself bringing up points only to have them refuted by leadership. For example, I asked Badandy about the status of the MTA:SA server, and I was shown a screenshot of 20-something pages. My assumption is that they just spent three weeks writing a plan that only HQ can approve of instead of actually working on bringing the new server up. I shouldn't have to pull teeth to ask for this information. Instead, leadership should consistently show what progress is being made, if any.

A reasonable assumption on this matter would be the direct opposite of what you are suggesting. To pitch an idea, a sensible person makes a functional proof of concept—a prototype—before the pitch itself. We haven't seen any reason to doubt that Badandy is a sensible person, so the respectful assumption here is to suppose he does have something up his sleeve if he's out there making a draft.

The fact that he is going for a challenging endeavor (setting up an English RP server in MTA:SA, as we extensively discussed in another thread) means he needs adult, constructive feedback, not childish gossip.
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: Sinister on June 10, 2022, 03:04:20 pm
Moderator Comment big quote

Damn
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: Nathan on June 10, 2022, 03:28:58 pm
...

Often, a single line gets taken out of context, and the whole point gets missed.

Missing the forest for the trees.
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: Nathan on June 10, 2022, 03:39:34 pm
.
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: JayL on June 10, 2022, 04:24:52 pm
I brought this up in Discord and it came down to the fact that I have a lack of trust that anything meaningful will take place. We've seen this story play out a number of times with various heroes and the end result has always been the same - they burn out, start to have resentment, and then quit, leaving the rest of us with nothing. I'm not saying Badandy isn't capable of building an amazing server nor am I saying the current leadership is inadequate.

My point is that we should move in a direction with a solid foundation. A solid foundation results in a successful place being built. Doing things as they always have been done will result in the same results as before and at that point, the question to ask is why waste the time developing and launching multiple servers.

You were assuming that Badandy was not "actually working on bringing the new server up." Thus far, what have you offered to back up this assumption? Past cases. You're projecting pessimism on his endeavor. We haven't seen his product yet and we haven't seen any credible indication that he is going to fail to deliver on his promise. You say that you hope to find a solution and that you are excited for a possible solution (Badandy's project). However, you write demotivating things about it. Aren't you working against the very goals you stated initially?
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: Brian on June 10, 2022, 05:34:48 pm
You keep saying you want progress, you keep saying you're annoyed at things not moving forward. Yet you keep asking the same questions that have already been answered, bringing up the same points you were given feedback on already and continually spread the same misinformation.
You make new topics while refusing to respond to responses you were given on your previous topics and comments. You refused to respond to me on Discord, and then you left the group chat. You ignored my and others' comments on the forums and then bring up the same complaints again. You can't demand transparency and then when people are transparent but its not the answers you want, you claim people aren't.

Yes, we want you to provide feedback and we are genuinely interested in your concerns but you keep talking about a healthy environment, community building, creating a foundation. Yet you are the one that is trying to leave handprints in freshly poured concrete and when its finally cured  you start chiseling at it because it isn't exactly how you envisioned it.
You claim you don't want a dictatorship, that you want things to be transparent (which in my opinion we are, anyone can reach out to us or post a comment on the forums and we will respond to it and give you the information that we can share), yet you counter exactly that in your own arguments.

You claim there's a divide between the different severs in Argonath, yet when I've told you (And others, publicly on this forum in recent times) that that is actually something we've worked to resolve over the years, you ignore it. You continue to spread misinformation. There is no animosity between the servers anymore, we see each other as equals, part of the same community, sharing the same goals. Helping each other out where we can. We talk to each other regularly, share our concerns and even discuss issues in our servers and how to resolve them together at times.

Quote
We should embrace experimentation. Try out new game modes and potentially move away from just being an RPG community. If we rapidly try out new modes and servers, we can quickly see what sticks and what gets the community to grow.

Have you had your eyes closed over the past year? Did you ignore everything we shared with you publicly on these forums and in Discord?
GTA:III is releasing its beta at the end of the month, Minecraft re-opened with a vanilla 1.19 server yesterday, SA is designing a move to MTA:SA. GTA V is working on FiveM. VC:MP is working on its next version. I publicly (and privately) asked several times if there's any interest in other servers (Like Valheim, Rust, Gary's mod, etc) but there didn't seem to be enough interest to warrant the dev and manpower to manage them, not to forget we'd also need to provide hosting (That we'd pay for out of pocket ourselves). If I had proper access to a dedicated server I'd love setting all of these up and servers up so our players have more places to have a good time at but unfortunately life isn't that easy.


Quote
I'm tired of having to be part of these discussions. But it stems from the fact that I feel we lost our way and that the current leadership is no longer listening and providing no results. We had several players try to initiate and be the "change they want to see," with failing results. Instead, I feel it should also stem from the leadership.

I promised myself that this would be the last time I open up and participate in these discussions. I'm sick and tired of having to repeat the points over and over again. Often, a single line gets taken out of context, and the whole point gets missed.


Do you not understand how unhelpful your topics are, they're the same questions (that we've answered already), the same blame game (that is mostly invalid) and the continued animosity and misinformation.
Might I remind you that we also made an agreement when you got unbanned the last time that you'd stop this type of behavior, that if you had concerns you'd reach out. You even agreed that we could straight up ban you if you continued as you were, yet here you still are.
If you really want the change you keep talking about you will need to be able to take in the information provided to you, process the information and then alter your opinion and feedback. Not just continue repeating the same thing over and over.  Be the change you want others to be, because to me it seems a lot of the issues you bring up are issues in your own behavior.

I also don't think you realize how much annoyance and stress you bring with your behavior. We do our best to respond to your concerns, bring the change you are worried about, yet you completely ignore us. We're kind and respectful to you even though you are not to us.
We have one, unpaid developer designing and working on a brand new server to solve the issues of our past and yet you still claim nothing is being done. No offense to you but it genuinely feels at times like we are trying to teach a toddler a new thing and we're just having to repeat ourselves over and over again in the hopes that at one point it clicks and they realize what is being explained to them.

We (the leaders, the staff) are not perfect and we are aware we can do things better. We are also aware we can be doing more and we know we've made mistakes (and will continue making mistakes) but we are willing to learn from it, we are willing to accept that we made a mistake and we are not afraid of sharing what hasn't worked in the past. But when we do you ignore it and you claim we are ignoring you or shutting you down. We've given you chances and we will continue to give others chances would they show interest.

You claim you want a more community spirit but you are the one that is causing more of a divide within the community. People like Mario Rinna, JayL, Cutt3r and others have shared their concerns and worries properly. They provided questions and feedback and continued their discussion when feedback or questions were returned to them. Andy and I got a lot of useful information and realized things we didn't consider ourselves and they also helped relieve some worries we've had about the servers future. They remained respectful and understood we've got our own skillset and experiences and didn't take our opinions and responses as personal attacks (because they are not).
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: Nathan on June 10, 2022, 07:30:33 pm
.
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: Kessu on June 10, 2022, 08:42:35 pm
Kessu managed to separate himself and VC:MP from Argonath and specifically has language saying they will never be united with the server of the server (see language in Discord servers post).

We weren't given a host by Argonath, so we got our own and will not return to have the same possible issues where our server was down for 8 months. We are still part of Argonath. Do not attempt to twist what I've said very clearly.

First time I'm hearing about this as well, didn't see any sort of announcement.

VC:MP server is making a new script from scratch that is being tested, there will not be any news about it nor any changelogs that you can see. The entire server and it's systems will be tested within administrative team and released once fully ready to the public.

That's part of a post directly replying to multiple points of yours. We're transparent, you're just spreading bs because you don't read anything you're told and then claim we're the bad guys.

This is me talking to you, person to person, fuck the ranks. I'm getting sick and tired of your shit.

You want to have a conversation? Then fucking read the replies. Stop being an idiot.
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: Kessu on June 10, 2022, 08:46:05 pm
Yes, we want you to provide feedback and we are genuinely interested in your concerns but you keep talking about a healthy environment, community building, creating a foundation. Yet you are the one that is trying to leave handprints in freshly poured concrete and when its finally cured  you start chiseling at it because it isn't exactly how you envisioned it.
You claim you don't want a dictatorship, that you want things to be transparent (which in my opinion we are, anyone can reach out to us or post a comment on the forums and we will respond to it and give you the information that we can share), yet you counter exactly that in your own arguments.

This is my main issue. Why is it that I have to pull teeth and ask questions instead of being a proactive conversation led by administration? Why is the leadership afraid to have an open dialog and to work in transparency instead of covering things with curtains and revealing them only when users ask for them?

Having these "closed-door" meetings, decisions being made for us, without taking into account that perhaps we have seen a thing or two and would rather help resolve the issues ahead of time INSTEAD of being forced to accept decisions made for us which results in players not wanting to spend time in any of the servers?

At the end of the day, the focus should be on building something that people want - not building personal projects and then hoping people like them.

We don't owe you daily, weekly, monthly, yearly or once in a lifetime updates. You are not entitled to telling us how to spend our time. We rather focus on things that are important, such as actually developing the servers instead of being your babysitter and holding your hand just so you don't get lost. Newsflash, sometimes you gotta be able to find your own way. In this case, just asking if you want to know something.

For the love of god how many fucking times do I need to repeat that.
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: Kessu on June 10, 2022, 08:49:23 pm
We're kind and respectful to you even though you are not to us.

I've always responded in a similar fashion. I never resorted to name calling, cursing others out, etc. The same cannot be said by some of the members of the leadership team (Kessu specifically). Asking tough questions is not the same as being disrespectful. I'm asking tough questions because I truly want to understand. Instead, I'm seen as being just a toxic influence of the community.

You're not asking the hard questions, you're asking the same questions everytime you open one of these topics. And we've replied to these questions already. That pisses off basically everyone and I for one will call out your behavior exactly as it is.

You need to re-read Mario's post because he was spot fucking on with how you've behaved and how you make others feel with your constant shit. We're tired of the same constant shit and if it doesn't stop soon, we will enforce your deal with Aragorn.
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: Mario_Rinna on June 10, 2022, 08:59:26 pm
Missing the forest for the trees.
Nice one, haven't seen this boomer meme for a while.

Doing things as they always have been done will result in the same results as before and at that point, the question to ask is why waste the time developing and launching multiple servers.
Who are you to say if they're wasting their time or not? They can decide for themselves.

Things don't get communicated efficiently.
Hypocritical, given how you're barely capable of communication yourself.

This is my main issue. Why is it that I have to pull teeth
Just a month ago you threw an ultimatum that, frankly speaking, was so pitiful, empty, and infantile that they didn't even bother to do anything about it. You asked some questions here on forum, people spent their time to answer, you left without saying bye. Now the full moon is approaching again, and you're back with another cringe episode of Santa Barbara nobody wants to watch.

Why would anyone want to talk to you, cater to you, given your rep of acting like a Karen? Does the Earth revolve around you? Badandy did send you something, and yet you're still mad he didn't drop everything he was doing and start entertaining you.  :app:

Having these "closed-door" meetings, decisions being made for us, without taking into account that perhaps we have seen a thing or two and would rather help resolve the issues ahead of time INSTEAD of being forced to accept decisions made for us which results in players not wanting to spend time in any of the servers?
Then don't spend time in any of the servers, if none of them are up to your in(s)ane standards which you cannot even properly explain. If nothing is good enough for you, why are you here? Are you some kind of a masochist?

At the end of the day, the focus should be on building something that people want - not building personal projects and then hoping people like them.
Devs aren't people?

For the other servers, I think support for them would only come when we have more than 10 people in the community who are active.
Why more than 10? Because you feel like it? Why not more than 11? More than 12? Out of where are these numbers coming?

At this point, I'm at a crossroads. Do I simply just give up and move on to other pastures, or do I keep continuing to fight and bring positive change. At this point, I don't know.
At this point, if you move on to other pastures, pulling teeth and putting lipstick on your pigs or what is it that you do for a living, you will bring positive change. It's a win-win, bro.
Title: Re: My inaccurate, batshit insane open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: Nathan on June 10, 2022, 09:18:23 pm
At this point, if you move on to other pastures, pulling teeth and putting lipstick on your pigs or what is it that you do for a living, you will bring positive change. It's a win-win, bro.

Got it, bro.
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: Brian on June 11, 2022, 12:24:38 am
-text-

My assumptions comes from past results and experiences. Not with Badandy specifically but by past leaderships who over promised and never delivered and then just quit when things got too mundane. My purpose with the open letter is not to find faults in every single thing but instead a plan to move forward, to setup a proper bedrock of a foundation, which everything else can rest upon. It was more of a call for a brighter future than a look back on past mistakes.
This is exactly what Badandy has been working on, and has been through review in recent days. In our recent conversations in different topics over the forums this is what we've been trying to establish with you.




This is my main issue. Why is it that I have to pull teeth and ask questions instead of being a proactive conversation led by administration? Why is the leadership afraid to have an open dialog and to work in transparency instead of covering things with curtains and revealing them only when users ask for them?

Having these "closed-door" meetings, decisions being made for us, without taking into account that perhaps we have seen a thing or two and would rather help resolve the issues ahead of time INSTEAD of being forced to accept decisions made for us which results in players not wanting to spend time in any of the servers?

At the end of the day, the focus should be on building something that people want - not building personal projects and then hoping people like them.

I don't think asking us a question if you have one is pulling teeth, we've been open with the people for years now, if people have questions they tend to get answers and you'll run in to a no sometimes and that's alright too, we should have the right to keep some things internal too, but there's not much that we do.

When have we had "closed door meetings" and when have we ignored the public and their opinion. We put forward our idea to the public, we put forward a poll, we are working on a vision to put forward to the community.
We've been sharing our stance and ideology for years, we've told you where we are, our struggles, the things that we could use. We took in player feedback and have constantly been adjusting our stance internally based on feedback we've gotten through posts.

It feels to me you are either still angry with how things were done years ago and are still complaining about that or are just refusing to see the change that has already been brought to Argonath and what we have shared with the community, because we've been to hell and back to get to the point where we are where we can actually work towards forming the communities idea for a server. Did you forget where we were just a few years ago where the owners wouldn't even allow us to try out something simple like removing blips, even though almost everyone in the community wanted it. And I do not disagree things might be slow sometimes but we are a small team, working free of charge. We all have lifes, families, we enjoy playing other games, we have other friends, other communities we are part of. But that doesn't mean we care for Argonath any less. We try to be fair to anyone, and give everyone a fair chance. But that doesn't mean we just do things willy nilly, we try to have a structure, a balance. We've shared all of this publicly several times, in the chat with the owners topics, on several topics you or others have created. Even in private messages when someone asks us we give the same response, if you want to help talk to us, but be willing to put in the work and show us you want to work with the rest of us to progress things.
This is also why its frustrating for us having to respond to the same things over and over again. Our answers are and have been publicly on these forums for some time now, we try to strive towards so many of the things you have been complaining about and when we tell you this it genuinely feels like you have been ignoring what we've been sharing with you.




I think this is part of the problem, there is information silos of these projects. Things don't get communicated efficiently.
If you enjoy these projects you would've been aware of them already, they're community ran and are well known internally. The Minecraft server is still in vanilla due to 1.19s recent release so there was just an announcement in their Discord. VC is in closed development, as their current server is still running fine. MTA:SA has been announced publicly and with people active on the server or in the discords. GTA V information is publicly available on their discord and it has been shared on these forums several times that leaks and info will be shared in their Discord.

We don't often post announcements because of the same concerns you have shared, we don't want to give people false hope. Running an unpaid community is hard, projects sometimes stagnate and people leave. There's no shame in that but we don't want to have players expecting something before we can be sure that its something we can present to the community. We also forget things sometimes, my first thought isn't always announcing something, rather than have it work properly and its easy for me to forget that others might not be aware of things. It's easy to give someone a nudge or heck even post something yourself if you want to call interest to something, that's where helping out starts.

I've always responded in a similar fashion. I never resorted to name calling, cursing others out, etc. The same cannot be said by some of the members of the leadership team (Kessu specifically). Asking tough questions is not the same as being disrespectful. I'm asking tough questions because I truly want to understand. Instead, I'm seen as being just a toxic influence of the community.
While still in a group chat with myself and Andy (and technically being a trial panel dev), and after not having messaged me for over five months you were actively shit talking leaders of the community in Discord. Kessu can be a cunt, but from personal experience he tends to only be one to people that are trying to push the limits of what is allowed or decent. He is actively aware of his own behavior and while I don't always have to agree with what or how he says something, I know I would always be able to approach him if I think he has crossed the line or just to give him my opinion, and that goes both ways.




I guess there is nothing left to say on my end then. I genuinely thought that I was helping by leading towards a better future but instead, the view point I'm hearing is that I'm just a squeaky wheel that needs to shut up. I've had multiple people tell me that I should just start my own community instead of wasting my time in these conversations. What kind of answer is that?

At this point, I'm at a crossroads. Do I simply just give up and move on to other pastures, or do I keep continuing to fight and bring positive change. At this point, I don't know.

While I am sure you genuinely believe you are helping, unfortunately to us it often feels like you think you know better than us. Just like you feel you are not being heard, we often share our experiences and opinions with you and you act like we are personally attacking you, while to us we are just having a conversation. I have a diverse opinion but a lot of experience especially with roleplay servers, I don't act like I know it all but I like sharing my own opinions and experiences and that's all they are. We don't mind you sharing your concerns or opinions but often you are sharing something we've already given the answer to. Or you share your concerns but they're just attacks on how things are, or were. And often not solutions to the issues we're experiencing or a hand we can use for help.
And then when things don't go your way you often offer up an ultimatum or just leave entirely. Last time I was not even given enough time to respond to your concerns, yet it often feels like you are blaming me for that going wrong, while I could not do anything at all about your decision to leave.

When I had my own struggles with Argonath and even during periods where I was happy with Argonath I was actively leading other communities, some SA, some other games. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, like I said in one of my above messages, I can do other things and still share my love and dedication for Argonath. I don't think there's a shame in doing other things alongside of Argo, I'd even say it is a healthy thing to do. In a free community things are expected to take longer periods of time, we share everything publicly and everyone can see the size of our staff team. I don't think it's a hard thing to do to see these things and set your own expectations accordingly.

If you feel fed up or genuinely believe that our attempts to reach out and the conversations we've had mean nothing then it might be healthy for you to step away for a bit and if its up to me I don't see Argonath going away any time soon and so long your access is not blocked you'll always be welcome here.
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: Brian on June 11, 2022, 12:40:44 am
My point is that we should move in a direction with a solid foundation. A solid foundation results in a successful place being built. Doing things as they always have been done will result in the same results as before and at that point, the question to ask is why waste the time developing and launching multiple servers.
The reason Badandy is taking his time with the vision is because he wants to provide a solid foundation, so that we can have a successful place being built. It's the exact opposite of doing things as they've always been done.
And even though we've answered this over five times in recent topics so far /Developers are free to work on the servers they choose to work on, so are staff members and leaders/. We are not, and can not force people to work on servers they do not want to work on or have no interest in working on. /This is not a business/ and if we were to start forcing people to work on things they do not want to work on you will actually end up killing the community.

This is part of the reason of our annoyance, you keep saying the same thing, leaders are not doing anything, too many servers, no progress. Yet that's all I've seen so far, you don't try to explain to us on how you got to your opinion, you don't try to put forward any type of useful data to collaborate your opinions and you don't try to actually help us move forward to solve these things you see as issues. We've asked you several times to elaborate on some of the points you've been making and you act like that's too much of an expectation and yet you expect so much of us.

We really do welcome your concerns and opinions but the issue is that we are often stuck with you telling us "Hey this is the issue" but then if we'd ask you "Okay, how can we do better" you don't want to help us get to the answer and it feels like you just keep putting the blame on us even when we try to reach out and do better.
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: KenAdams on June 11, 2022, 08:45:40 am
Why is it that I have to pull teeth and ask questions instead of being a proactive conversation led by administration? Why is the leadership afraid to have an open dialog and to work in transparency instead of covering things with curtains and revealing them only when users ask for them?

Having these "closed-door" meetings, decisions being made for us, without taking into account that perhaps we have seen a thing or two and would rather help resolve the issues ahead of time INSTEAD of being forced to accept decisions made for us which results in players not wanting to spend time in any of the servers?

At the end of the day, the focus should be on building something that people want - not building personal projects and then hoping people like them.

Honestly speaking, we, the players are free to ask questions whenever we want to. The administration you talk about belong to the same species, Homo sapiens . Kessu or Brian or Doyle will not get any dreams that Nathan or someone else has some questions to ask. At the end of the day, they have their own real life problems, just like we do.

About the "Closed door meetings":
The only discussions the III:MP administration have had "bEhInD cLoSeD dOoRs" were the discussions that have happened numerous times in the past in public. We (and other server HQs) are learning from the previous mistakes. We are always open to suggestions and feedbacks and believe me, I have never been banned for suggesting/questioning something in SA:MP or VC:MP. It's just that one should get off that high horse and actually start suggesting things, lol..

None of these projects are personal and none of the devs are being paid for working.. It's just for their mental satisfaction.

Also, if we lack the guts to thank a developer(or a staff member) for actually doing something good, then we loose the right to question the same developer(or staff member) for doing something wrong. I don't know why people take things for granted, not only here in this community, but in real life aswell. Hell, I've had Covid and I learned that I can't even take oxygen for granted. I'd personally advise you to stop rage-quitting and giving up on constructive things. Just because Brian didn't respond to your group chat due to his IRL issues doesn't mean that the whole world fucked you up.
Title: Re: My inaccurate, batshit insane open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: Nathan on June 11, 2022, 04:45:50 pm
Requesting this topic to be closed. Thanks.
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: Kessu on June 11, 2022, 04:46:17 pm
Discussion will remain open.
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: Nathan on June 11, 2022, 04:48:37 pm
Discussion will remain open.

What the point? You proved your point and I retracted my statement.
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: Kessu on June 11, 2022, 04:54:57 pm
Discussion will remain open.

What the point? You proved your point and I retracted my statement.
You are not the only party in a discussion. This is a forum topic that is publically open. Anyone can give their input, even if you decide to edit out the initial post and remove all your messages from discord  :rolleyes:
Title: Re: My inaccurate, batshit insane open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: Nathan on June 11, 2022, 04:59:48 pm
Discussion will remain open.

What the point? You proved your point and I retracted my statement.
You are not the only party in a discussion. This is a forum topic that is publically open. Anyone can give their input, even if you decide to edit out the initial post and remove all your messages from discord  :rolleyes:

Nobody else agreed with me. So clearly I'm in the wrong and there is no need for further discussion.
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: Kessu on June 11, 2022, 05:01:01 pm
Discussion will remain open.

What the point? You proved your point and I retracted my statement.
You are not the only party in a discussion. This is a forum topic that is publically open. Anyone can give their input, even if you decide to edit out the initial post and remove all your messages from discord  :rolleyes:

Nobody else agreed with me. So clearly I'm in the wrong and there is no need for further discussion.

And that doesn't mean the discussion should be ended for everyone because you no longer want to participate.

The topic will remain open.
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: Mario_Rinna on June 11, 2022, 05:17:51 pm
Nobody else agreed with me. So clearly I'm in the wrong and there is no need for further discussion.
What's the big deal, though, a bunch of people wrote some posts and exchanged opinions. Nobody died.  :neutral2:
Title: Re: My open letter on how we solve these issues
Post by: KenAdams on June 11, 2022, 07:24:46 pm
Nobody else agreed with me. So clearly I'm in the wrong and there is no need for further discussion.
What's the big deal, though, a bunch of people wrote some posts and exchanged opinions. Nobody died.  :neutral2:

Exactly...  :rolleyes:
Title: Re: Irrelevant
Post by: Doggie on June 12, 2022, 06:48:44 pm
You find the dude that came up with the idea to do a full reset, trade his blood for a timemachine and travel back to the days where the server was packed with 120+ players.
Title: Re: Irrelevant
Post by: KenAdams on June 12, 2022, 07:56:47 pm
You find the dude that came up with the idea to do a full reset, trade his blood for a timemachine and travel back to the days where the server was packed with 120+ players.

Interesting....
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Nathan on June 13, 2022, 03:21:32 pm
Restored the letter back.
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: jNewtonik on June 13, 2022, 08:06:40 pm
I deffinently can't agree with whole of Nath's post but neither to denie some of his statements, and because most of negative aspects of his post is already pointed out (if not entirely focused there)
I think It's time to see the possitive/correct ones too.
We have a bigger problem: the bedrock/foundation of the community. I fundamentally believe that if the foundation is not fixed, no other efforts will result in meaningful results. It doesn't matter if we launch 10+ servers when we have a failed foundation. It doesn't matter if we hire the best developers, and write the most amazing scripts; if the foundation is broken, things will fail.
Is there anybody trully believes that we don't have a faulty foundation? If I recall correctly the forums were down for almost a month just a while ago? Is this trully something we entirelly reject to reflect on? To be honest I actually have more faith and feeling more comfortable than ever before with the current CM team (specifically about Brian as I had the luck to meet him a little) but It comes to a point that you guys are actually lacking power to cover your own duties & this is due to a faulty foundation, not your personal fault, this is what Nath is trying to say. (I hope)

Eitherway, It's not okay from my perspective to leave CM's depending on their supernatural abilities of comming in contact with ghosts for whenever such problems occurs.
I hope we can come to some conclusions as we decided to keep this thread open, wishing everyone a good day!  :)
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Brian on June 13, 2022, 08:23:22 pm
-text-
I don't think many disagree that Argonath has had a fractured foundation (Owners rarely show up, leaders rarely have access, lots of internal conflict in the past and a lot of player-player conflict) for a while now, but we're definitely doing work to improve things and we'll continue to do so.
I just think that a lot of people seem to forget that we're all here to enjoy ourselves on Argonath and that leaders and staff are also just people, we're not professionals but we are doing our best to keep things running and to bring a decent experience to our community members.
We definitely have things we can improve and we will, but this requires time and also requires that when people make topics like this (Which is completely within their rights and we are supportive of people voicing their opinions and concerns) that they actually want to help us improve things and not just yell and point fingers. It's very though to try and resolve issues people have when they dont want to have a conversation with us about the issues so we can actually come to understand what and where we can make changes to improve things.

I also don't think we have been hiding the fact about the lack of access or forum downtime. We've always been straight forward with the issues we're experiencing and have shared several times that due to a lack of access granted to us by the owners its often impossible to maintain certain parts of our hosting (For example, the SAMP machine(It's why we moved off of Argo hosting for SA:MP) or the forum VM) which in turn also means that when there's issues they often appear to be more severe (As there's often more than one issue)
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: jNewtonik on June 14, 2022, 09:26:08 am
Just in case I've been misunderstood, I have nothing against any of you, you're actually surpassing the expectations and you've done more than whats required for the past years, especially if we take into account that this is all a volunteer work, with zero salary, I only shared this post to express that the lack of access you as CM's have, bothers me & this is something that I would like see being resolved the most. Thank you for your calmly and honest response.

Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Mario_Rinna on June 14, 2022, 01:04:31 pm
I deffinently can't agree with whole of Nath's post but neither to denie some of his statements, and because most of negative aspects of his post is already pointed out (if not entirely focused there)
I think It's time to see the possitive/correct ones too.
We have a bigger problem: the bedrock/foundation of the community. I fundamentally believe that if the foundation is not fixed, no other efforts will result in meaningful results. It doesn't matter if we launch 10+ servers when we have a failed foundation. It doesn't matter if we hire the best developers, and write the most amazing scripts; if the foundation is broken, things will fail.
Is there anybody trully believes that we don't have a faulty foundation?
Players and their RP are the center of a RP server, and admins/developers are "the help," the people who provide tools for RP and support/encourage RP.

What Nathan has written in his post is a North Korean interpretation of the subject: the Glorious Leader HQ is the most important part, while RP and RPers are not even mentioned. This is distortion and/or substitution of notions.

The HQ serving as the "foundation" is not supposed to be the case in a RP server. The purpose of a RP server is to provide a place for people to RP, and not a platform for "interaction", or even "cooperation" with HQ. The ideal scenario is that RPers do not even notice the existence of staff, a structure that exists outside of RP.

Again, returning to the "beloved example," the RS4 to RS5 transition.

1. People lost their RP tools, the money, the scripted items (drugs, guns, etc.), the houses/bizzes. If you used that in your RP, if you relied on those decorations, can you continue your RP when they suddenly go missing? RP items should not disappear because of events outside RP.

2. RS5 on release was so bugged that you had no ability to claw your way back to what you used to have within a reasonable amount of time. Moreover, groups that due to the nature of their RP could continue their RP without money, couldn't continue because of bugs or missing RS4 features.

3. Official groups and other key RP makers were told they were not getting anything at all "for free," including their official status.

What prevented SA-MP server of the time from doing what MTA:SA server of the time did (solving problem of data loss by giving $ back)?
We at MTA, too, suffered because of this data loss, but we just restored everything we could and gave everyone a compensation of $100k, which is more than most had before the data loss.
Doesn't matter what. They removed money from people, removed other RP tools, discouraged RP and encouraged the grind of scripted jobs. Can you be surprised that people, who wanted to RP, went to a place where RP is encouraged...

What was done to at least somehow "massage" these problems away, alleviate them? On time, nothing. Did SA-MP fail or did it simply arrive at its logical conclusion after the screws were tightened to the max? What happened? A disaster or things that would normally happen in such an environment? The latter.

If you cannot commit to keeping players' assets, how do you expect them to commit to your server? Is it reasonable to expect loyalty from players who you're not loyal to? How do you build trust in this situation?

I saw many "realistic" economies fail due to everybody starting from 0. Where is realism in everybody being a poor peasant? Some server leaders (I'm not talking about any Argonath server) say, "well, what am I going to do if people reach end-game quickly?" I say, "make more 'end-game' content."

If it's a RP server, the RP in it should be the main priority. Virtual money are virtual to us, but real money for the characters within RP. Is it good RP if your character is ascetic, because you the player consider the money fake? No. Look at the west, and most of the rest of the world. Money is a god, a target for worship. Remove it, and it's immediately harder to parody reality.

We need decorations that stay in place while the performance is underway, regardless of external reasons.

If I recall correctly the forums were down for almost a month just a while ago? Is this trully something we entirelly reject to reflect on?
I would make the current forum an archive, and make a new one from scratch. A rather simple way to turn a new page. Not sure what the actual plan for it is, though.

To be honest I actually have more faith and feeling more comfortable than ever before with the current CM team (specifically about Brian as I had the luck to meet him a little) but It comes to a point that you guys are actually lacking power to cover your own duties & this is due to a faulty foundation, not your personal fault, this is what Nath is trying to say. (I hope)
Local history provides clear examples of what not to do and what to avoid, so it would actually take a great effort to step on the same rake again. I don't think the MTA:SA HQ wants to do that.

Encourage RP and support it. That's it. No need for "radical transparency," as Nathan suggested, because once the new server is up and available to public, everything hidden will be revealed anyway. Having access to the final product is as transparent as it can get, much more transparent than a "window inside HQ," or any other "communications." It's usually very obvious if RP is a priority of the server's author(s) or not, because if it is, there is no reason to conceal it or disguise it in some way.

I guess time will tell whether it's something we want to play or not; I certainly don't think anything is doomed or whatever, and I don't admire Nathan's logic of previous team bad = this HQ deserves shit (it is funny though  :lol:). I wouldn't even say the previous HQ, or the HQs before it were that bad (or bad at all, to be exact) either; the game those people were playing was rigged from the start, and many of them ended up as victims of it at the end of the day.

Until I see that there is an inability to comprehend the purpose of the server and its priorities (and I haven't seen that so far), I am optimistic and don't see a reason not to be.

Think I'm done posting my demagoguery on this subject, and I'll just sit back and wait to see what happens. :gand:
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Sawyer on June 14, 2022, 04:25:46 pm
I'm seriously starting to believe that we need topics like this one to have something to disagree on.  :hah:
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Mr. Goobii on June 14, 2022, 10:55:20 pm
We may hate these damn topics but we also need them to stay alive. Leaders shouldn't be angry because they popup now and then, but rather acknowledge them for what they are. Sure it's hell of annoying reading em but it's somewhat expression of what people do not like and only then we can improve and become better as a community. Stay strong fellas!
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: CharlieKasper on June 16, 2022, 06:22:45 pm
Lol you log in years later and you see the daily "how we can improve argonath" still an open topic.

Never change argonath
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Hammer_ on June 17, 2022, 12:38:54 am
Lol you log in years later and you see the daily "how we can improve argonath" still an open topic.

Never change argonath
Communication is key, most of us have given up but still something inside of us wants the community we all started with to thrive, so that makes us want to try.
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Lincoln. on June 17, 2022, 12:11:27 pm
Gvardia is still stronger than Argonath
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Badandy on June 17, 2022, 04:05:18 pm
The last time I saw Gvardias, they wanted to help "save" it and DMed players and admins. Along with using racial slurs. When they didn't get their way, they acted like big babies and left. Rather have a dead SAMP server than have those people back.
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Kessu on June 17, 2022, 04:35:20 pm
Stay on topic.
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Jeremy. on June 17, 2022, 06:24:02 pm
The last time I saw Gvardias, they wanted to help "save" it and DMed players and admins. Along with using racial slurs. When they didn't get their way, they acted like big babies and left. Rather have a dead SAMP server than have those people back.

Just a quick reply for mister Bad Andy  :eek:

The Gvardia Family has not shown any initiative in playing on the server for a couple of years already, to be more specific, since this new era Fort Carson thing. Please consider your words twice before talking publicly about an official group like this. If there was anyone wearing the tag without our allowance thats none of our business, The Gvardia Family is not interested in playing on Argonath anytime soon.

If there will be a thing about returning the activity we will make sure its made public on our topic, untill then please dont throw any false accusations.

Thank you for your time and sorry for the off-topic. We had to sort it out.
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Badandy on June 17, 2022, 07:26:11 pm
The last time I saw Gvardias, they wanted to help "save" it and DMed players and admins. Along with using racial slurs. When they didn't get their way, they acted like big babies and left. Rather have a dead SAMP server than have those people back.

Just a quick reply for mister Bad Andy  :eek:

The Gvardia Family has not shown any initiative in playing on the server for a couple of years already, to be more specific, since this new era Fort Carson thing. Please consider your words twice before talking publicly about an official group like this. If there was anyone wearing the tag without our allowance thats none of our business, The Gvardia Family is not interested in playing on Argonath anytime soon.

If there will be a thing about returning the activity we will make sure its made public on our topic, untill then please dont throw any false accusations.

Thank you for your time and sorry for the off-topic. We had to sort it out.

I have a screenshot from back in October 2021 of Lincoln Gvardia and Speedy Gvardia spelling out the n word in public chat. I do not take back anything I said, especially with Lincoln replying this topic. I don't really care about your group or who any of you are. That behavior isn't acceptable. Now coming back here like Lincoln saying that Gvardia is stronger than Argonath isn't on topic and is even against it. If you don't care about Argonath or have nothing productive to say, don't say it.
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Kessu on June 17, 2022, 07:51:46 pm
Stay on topic, final warning :(

Applies to the people whose posts have been removed and any new off topic posts.
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Nathan on June 21, 2022, 03:26:47 pm
Lol you log in years later and you see the daily "how we can improve argonath" still an open topic.

Improvement should be a goal for all of us.

Stay on topic, final warning :(

Applies to the people whose posts have been removed and any new off topic posts.

I don't understand why this thread is still open. Clearly I missed the point and nobody else wants to continue the discussions.
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Stivi on June 23, 2022, 02:21:07 am
It all went downhill when some developers left and FredericK came on board, and then some even more out-of-the-loop developers came, and well...
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Hammer_ on June 23, 2022, 03:19:57 am
It all went downhill when some developers left and FredericK came on board, and then some even more out-of-the-loop developers came, and well...
Not sure how Chase and Marcel were out-of-the-loop developers after FredericK?
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Mr. Goobii on June 23, 2022, 05:54:14 am
It all went downhill when some developers left and FredericK came on board, and then some even more out-of-the-loop developers came, and well...
Not sure how Chase and Marcel were out-of-the-loop developers after FredericK?

Marcel was fucking out of his mind. If he ever comes back (and I'm glad he's community banned) I'm out of this place.
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Hammer_ on June 24, 2022, 09:02:11 pm
It all went downhill when some developers left and FredericK came on board, and then some even more out-of-the-loop developers came, and well...
Not sure how Chase and Marcel were out-of-the-loop developers after FredericK?

Marcel was fucking out of his mind. If he ever comes back (and I'm glad he's community banned) I'm out of this place.
I personally was against Marcel, but he was a good developer. That’s all what I say, and I’m glad that he’s community banned as well because he was one of the reasons of the downfall of Argonath. I’m not sure if anyone else noticed, but the day he ruined rhe black market, most players walked out and he had nothing but bad comments for players who criticised his idea.
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Hammer_ on June 24, 2022, 09:17:05 pm
No offence to anyone, but take a look at this topic; https://www.argonathrpg.eu/index.php?topic=124437.0
The managers back then didn’t even know what the developers were doing, and reading posts on that topic - Bennzy wrote “ppl dm when no admins ig, when we report on forums, nothing happens” I mean, I may have been a retard in that topic but I was only 13 back then so I didn’t know what I was talking about, but now I do. I clearly do, kind of where the issue started in the first place and that’s also when a new community started, which had active developer who brought out updates every week.
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Stivi on June 25, 2022, 02:07:24 pm
No offence to anyone, but take a look at this topic; https://www.argonathrpg.eu/index.php?topic=124437.0
The managers back then didn’t even know what the developers were doing, and reading posts on that topic - Bennzy wrote “ppl dm when no admins ig, when we report on forums, nothing happens” I mean, I may have been a retard in that topic but I was only 13 back then so I didn’t know what I was talking about, but now I do. I clearly do, kind of where the issue started in the first place and that’s also when a new community started, which had active developer who brought out updates every week.
Yeah that's 2018, SAMP shifted directions in 2013,



It all went downhill when some developers left and FredericK came on board, and then some even more out-of-the-loop developers came, and well...
Not sure how Chase and Marcel were out-of-the-loop developers after FredericK?
I don't mean all developers were out of the loop, but some certainly were.

Look at Badandy blaming Gvardia as if we, Soprano and Scotto weren't the ONLY players in RS5 back when he himself was playing in another community. Bless him. How do you solve this? We answered these questions on these topics before, a lot of times. You don't want to listen, well I won't play - but don't ask me why I'm not playing if you're not gonna listen to the answer.

Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Badandy on June 25, 2022, 03:41:25 pm
Look at Badandy blaming Gvardia as if we, Soprano and Scotto weren't the ONLY players in RS5 back when he himself was playing in another community. Bless him. How do you solve this? We answered these questions on these topics before, a lot of times. You don't want to listen, well I won't play - but don't ask me why I'm not playing if you're not gonna listen to the answer.

When did I blame Gvardia for anything except for recent behavior back in October by some of it's members or supposed members?
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Sawyer on June 26, 2022, 12:15:32 am
I personally was against Marcel, but he was a good developer.
Just a gardener surrounded by rocket scientists.  :mad:

The topic is only going to get worse, I'd suggest to make peace with what we have and patiently wait for the upcoming MTASA project.
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Huntsman on June 26, 2022, 03:52:15 pm
This is how every single one of these topics ends up, and you guys still cherish hopes of any revival.

A house divided against itself cannot stand. Argonath is case in point.
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Stivi on July 02, 2022, 01:28:11 pm
Look at Badandy blaming Gvardia as if we, Soprano and Scotto weren't the ONLY players in RS5 back when he himself was playing in another community. Bless him. How do you solve this? We answered these questions on these topics before, a lot of times. You don't want to listen, well I won't play - but don't ask me why I'm not playing if you're not gonna listen to the answer.

When did I blame Gvardia for anything except for recent behavior back in October by some of it's members or supposed members?
You see the contradiction on that or have you decided to compile a RICO case?

The point is, can you blame the players for being selfish / greedy / money-making NPCs, when there are money glitches on the server? The economy was shit from the get-go, and "we went bankrupt" at some point, but a narrative of "players should not be greedy, and just RP it" was implemented. That went well.
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: TheRock on July 09, 2022, 02:51:51 am
A week late to the party, but oh well.

Why I stopped playing?

Most of my friends left, due real life responsibilities just like my case. Someone has to pay the bills, I'm no longer a teenager without house bills.
SA:MP has gotten old, we all grow up and our interests shift. I have an office job, at one of the top e-commerce companies among my country. I use a computer daily, 3 monitors, 8 hours per day, coding all day long. Whoever has worked in similar conditions knows very well, that after the shift, you just don't have any mood to use your personal computer. My eyes and my brain need to rest. But even at times that I do find some spare time to do so, I prefer playing Single Player games lately, due to the fact that it keeps me calm. I can't be arsed to deal with bs, I can't be arsed to join a server where people fight. Simply because I have no time to do that. I want to return home, occasionally hit the power button, sit on my couch, switch the xbox controller and enjoy a bit of gaming. Nothing less or more. Recently discovered that I hadn't used my personal computer for over 70 days, you can imagine why.

I can't recall a simple time that I re-visited this forum without seeing a topic about "WHAT WENT WRONG, HOW TO FIX THIS OR THAT" theme. And I'm really annoyed by that. I'm annoyed that Argonath is stuck at GTA Universe meanwhile not all servers are active. There are other games that could come handy. I just visited the forums and was greeted by an announcement saying "OH WOW LOOK AT III:MP", and yes, I googled it, and found nothing regarding. Looked back at the topic, and found a link to the mod website. Saw the forums of that "new" argo expansion. Meanwhile I read about expanding back to MTA:SA. What is the actual point of giving people status and building servers nobody asked for? Don't get me wrong on this one, but building a multiplayer server for a "community" but only having 10 people interested in it (Don't kill me for this one, but never have I heard about III:MP before.), it could be a friends project, and not a "WE NEED THIS SERVER" project. It's late and I am tired, my point is, SA:MP has died, it's just that some people don't want to let it go. It's doing more harm than already has done the last years after 95% of the playerbase abandoned this. I don't need to go on, for the reasons that people left. We were all here, we all saw it happening, yet we all stood with fingers crossed.

2 years ago during the covid quarantine, I gave SA:MP another chance, I played somewhere else with a group of people that I met here back in 2009. Had tons of fun. After a few events here and there, we decided to return here even if temporarily, to relive the thrill. The good old days. Hah, big No. We were greeted and forced into roleplaying into Fort Carson. In the desert. Why? Because someone (yes, you. I know you are reading this. :) ) chose that for the next attempt to revive the server, it would be only Fort Carson. Without asking anyone of the players that were left here, without nothing. Just saw a dream, OH LOOK. Let's force everyone into Fort Carson. Excuse me. What the actual ....! When I first started playing here, I stayed because of the freedom I had, the freedom to RP anything, the freedom to roam around map even solo, or with friends I made. So, when we returned, it was not the same. Let alone any e-possession I had was wiped for the 3rd, 4th or 197th time. Oh dear. When you destroy what people build in their precious time, don't expect them to come back. And no, I never cared for my "e-belongings", always donated away whatever I had, to people who could make use of them, more than my inactive self. This was it, I got fed up, deleted SA:MP and never looked back since.

As for Nathan, if it wasn't for me and somebody else you would still be community banned (yes, the first time.)
Take a chill pill mate, the constant leaving-comeback drama doesn't lead to anything.

Happy to see some old names still around, particularly some people who contributed to this thread.

“Your actions will always speak volumes louder than your words ever will!” – G Swiss
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Dutchy on July 09, 2022, 07:03:48 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mFOCh1nM7s

UwU
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Badandy on July 09, 2022, 09:48:04 pm
I can't recall a simple time that I re-visited this forum without seeing a topic about "WHAT WENT WRONG, HOW TO FIX THIS OR THAT" theme. And I'm really annoyed by that. I'm annoyed that Argonath is stuck at GTA Universe meanwhile not all servers are active. There are other games that could come handy. I just visited the forums and was greeted by an announcement saying "OH WOW LOOK AT III:MP", and yes, I googled it, and found nothing regarding. Looked back at the topic, and found a link to the mod website. Saw the forums of that "new" argo expansion. Meanwhile I read about expanding back to MTA:SA. What is the actual point of giving people status and building servers nobody asked for? Don't get me wrong on this one, but building a multiplayer server for a "community" but only having 10 people interested in it (Don't kill me for this one, but never have I heard about III:MP before.), it could be a friends project, and not a "WE NEED THIS SERVER" project.

I'm working on the MTA SA project since I still like San Andreas as a game and it's fun for me to develop a server I have a vision for. Sure I could work on FiveM or other mods, which I have done but right now, I just want to work on this. There's not that many players interested but I'm also hoping to gain players from the existing base that MTA SA has. Even though those are not great chances, at the end of the day, I'm doing this because I want to do it. Sure it's a bit selfish and not thinking bigger picture of the whole community but that's what all the developers/leaders do. We are just doing what we like.

A note about SAMP. I developed the SAMP server for around 6 months and honestly got so burnt out with dealing with pawn and the SAMP architecture that I just didn't want to deal with it. I thought about moving to MTA SA but gave up on that too. I wasn't working on anything really, maybe thinking about working on something else and then Nathan brought up the MTA SA server and that peaked my interest again with starting it officially. I'm quite excited for it personally because it's going to be a lot different than the SAMP server in better ways. Encouraging player interaction and roleplay over pure grinding and money with new mechanics, creative freedom to players to experience.
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Sawyer on July 10, 2022, 04:11:38 pm
(yes, you. I know you are reading this. :) )
(https://i.imgur.com/2jZVDMh.gif)

(https://i.imgur.com/lZJZGms.jpg)




Good to see you, Rockie. Unin says ante gamisou as I type this reply.  :rofl:
ante gamisou = fuck off
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Huntsman on July 10, 2022, 07:11:06 pm

Meanwhile I read about expanding back to MTA:SA. What is the actual point of giving people status and building servers nobody asked for? Don't get me wrong on this one, but building a multiplayer server for a "community" but only having 10 people interested in it (Don't kill me for this one, but never have I heard about III:MP before.), it could be a friends project, and not a "WE NEED THIS SERVER" project. It's late and I am tired, my point is, SA:MP has died, it's just that some people don't want to let it go. It's doing more harm than already has done the last years after 95% of the playerbase abandoned this. I don't need to go on, for the reasons that people left.

YES! Could not have said better myself
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Zlatan on August 05, 2022, 11:09:05 pm
I've heard they're working on GTA Trilogy multiplayer... it would probably be better over there? But lets face it Argonath is dead.
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Badandy on August 05, 2022, 11:56:37 pm
I've heard they're working on GTA Trilogy multiplayer... it would probably be better over there? But lets face it Argonath is dead.

There are still people here that want to try to make Argonath better with new servers and try to gain players. If you are just going to come here and bash Argonath and be negative, just leave.
Title: Re: My open letter on how to solve some of these issues
Post by: Huntsman on August 06, 2022, 12:12:21 am
I've heard they're working on GTA Trilogy multiplayer... it would probably be better over there? But lets face it Argonath is dead.

Dude's post history (https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/429015039073058826/1005236519897931876/unknown.png)
Prior to his shitposts here the last time he posted was 2020. Go figure.

Nobody cares about what you have to say at this point mate. If you left, and the only reason you come back here is to belittle people who still try to do something about it, then stay left and get the fuck out please.
SimplePortal 2.3.7 © 2008-2025, SimplePortal