SA:MP is borderline unplayable for new players

[stormeus]

I'm giving my take as someone who played RS4.1 but hasn't played RS5 or RS6. I joined the server to see what the new freecop system was about, but I didn't get a chance to try it mostly because the server does a very poor job of guiding people who don't know what the server has to offer. I say this not to stir the pot but to point out a serious flaw that seems to get in the way of playing the game.

In summary:

• The tutorial dives incredibly deep into minutiae that don't matter while the script provides virtually no contextual information.
• The help system is basically an instruction manual that you have to constantly refer back to. As a supplemental tool it's good, but as the main source of information it's poor.
• There are many barriers to entry that prevent players from taking the most basic actions like depositing money into a bank or playing as law enforcement.
• Scripted mechanics like toll booths or being forced to use /engine to turn a vehicle on are jarring because they conflict with single player mechanics for no noticeably good reason.

That said, I'll start with my experience playing with little familiarity with the script and finish with potential remedies.

The tutorial experience
Registering for a new account was fine but there was a confusing error in the chat window that said I'd entered an invalid password. Logging in seemed to work anyway, so I decided to start the tutorial, which is where the problems start.

First, the tutorial doesn't make an attempt to explain what roleplay is. Instead, the very first screen you get is an incredibly long bit of help text talking about the vehicle system, with lots of commands to try and remember. A lot of weird details are brought up like the jerry can system and rolling down your windows. Still, I managed to gloss over the red text at the top that says "since RS5.2, you must now use the /engine command to turn your vehicle engine on."

I'm sure you're ready to ask "how could you have missed that?" Well, there's two things. First, the mention of changes since RS5.2 threw me off since I never even played RS5, so it didn't strike me as immediately relevant. But secondly, each tutorial screen only gives you 10 seconds to read them. I figured the tutorial would just wait for me and I could close it out myself, but no, the tutorial marches on at breakneck pace to explain as many things as it can. Is this supposed to make the tutorial feel shorter? Because it accomplishes that, at the expense of being able to really learn anything at all.

Looking at the screenshots in retrospect, I noticed there's a Back button on the GUI. While writing this post, I wanted to be fair and see if those buttons would've let me review the advice I missed, but no, the buttons are basically broken. The "back" button brings you into a help menu and the "exit" button just closes the tutorial page rather than ending the tutorial. Even if you press the back button, the script will close whatever you're looking at as soon as time expires and move on to the next page. Good luck trying to read through the tutorial.

No matter, after about a minute we've done the tutorial and we get our cash bonus.

Time to go exploring
Armed with $10,000 and a very cursory understanding of the gamemode, it's time to drive around the city and find things to do. Thankfully you spawn at the airport, where there's no shortage of cars to borrow for an afternoon drive. The cars, however, don't move. Was there something in the tutorial screen I missed? There's no option to replay the tutorial so I'm not really sure. Maybe it's the car, I'll try a different one instead. Ah, no, this one's not moving either.

After floundering about for a couple of minutes, I finally used the "help" command to bring up the page about using vehicles, where I learned my mistake. But really, this seems like a mistake on the script's part. For one, the single player game turns the engine on automatically. Almost every other server turns the engine on automatically. Why do I have to use a command to turn it on here? And even with this knowledge, I had to actively remember to use the engine command when getting into a new car. Couldn't there just be a hotkey, or a prompt that says "Hey friend! You seem to be pressing your accelerate key a lot, did you remember to use /engine?"

And yes, I am spending this much time talking about this one aspect, because it's reflective of many other issues in the script. Even if you have photographic memory and manage to remember everything from the tutorial screens, there will be scenarios where the script explains nothing for you, which brings me to:

The police station
I remember Pershing Square being a rather popular destination for players, so I decided to head on over there -- despite no one but myself being online -- to get a taste for what I could do. I found the map icon and entryway for the police station and started to explore the interior.

The very first thing I saw when I entered the station was a pretty puzzling message.


I beg your pardon?

I don't know what notoriety is. This probably isn't for me, but then why is it here? There aren't any indicators of what you can do in here other than this obscure message. The position for the locker room changed since RS4 so you just have to run around the building until you find it, and sure enough, there it is:


Not that you'd be able to use it anyway.

The pickup says that you need to apply at the ARPD website to be an officer. This is confusing since this forum thread says you can't be an officer at all and need to go to the Department of Corrections. However, even though the script knows I'm not allowed to be an officer, and knows that I would like to play one, it gives me no information about how to do this. There's nothing in the tutorial or this message about the county jail. And it also conflicts with what the tutorial just told me 10 minutes ago about how I just need to get a passport.


Not like that would work either, because there's no one online who could give you a passport.

Assuming someone were online to give me a passport, the information in the citizenship study terminal is wrong anyway. If someone asked me who the mayor of Los Santos is, am I supposed to say it's caion:



Or am I supposed to say there is no mayor because no one in their right mind would go through this Kafkaesque nightmare of a script?



In any case it doesn't matter. The ARPD website was down when I was playing, and it's still down as I write this, so there is no visible mechanism for new, inexperienced players to play law enforcement.


Whoops.

Shopping
When I was passing through Pershing Square, I noticed a pickup for what seemed like a business. I want to see what's inside, so I step into it and press the same hotkey I used to enter the police station.


Where did my money go?

Ah, looks like I lost $200. That's interesting. As it turns out you actually need to read all of this information very carefully because the mere act of entering a business charges you money. I have no idea how this makes sense. Is this supposed to be a money sink? Because last I checked there isn't a bouncer outside my supermarket shaking me down for money before I shop for groceries.

But whatever, we're inside the shop now. The script doesn't tell you what you can do in the shop. The /buy command works, which is interesting because the tutorial doesn't even mention this command. I actually mixed it up with the "pay" command, which the tutorial only mentions in the context of clothes shopping, but why are there two different commands for this in the first place?. But hey, now we finally get some options, and it looks like we can buy the phone the tutorial spent an entire page on. Might as well get a GPS and a CB radio while we're here to see what those do.

The CB radio gives us a prompt to join a channel. The GPS, however, tells us nothing.



But it turns out that the GPS is remarkably useful, because it guides you to a bunch of different job, shop and government locations around the map. It's a shame then that the GPS did not come up at all when I was just starting out. Nonetheless we've made it this far, and seeing as we're not cut out for a career in law enforcement or government, let's do what any non-legal resident would do and get paid under the table to do menial labor.

Going to work
I enjoy a nice game of Minecraft from time to time, so I pick mining as my first job. I get a marker on the map directing me to the quarry and head up the freeway to get to work.



Or not, seeing as there's an entire toll plaza set up on the bridge. I didn't see any signs saying there was a toll plaza ahead, and I don't even know why there would be a toll plaza here at all. Couldn't some cops just park some cars along the road and, you know, RP it?

In retrospect I can see how toll booths might be an interesting money sink, but in the moment I feel like this is yet another obstacle in the way of me doing anything in this server. There isn't a legal way to exit the plaza without paying either, but thankfully there are no cops, because again, who would bother with the process of signing up to be one? Instead I improvise and decide to ford the river.



Fording the river doesn't go well.

We finally make it to the quarry, but there's no indication of what we're supposed to be doing here either. There's a dollar sign marker at this trailer which I would imagine is used to check in for work, but no, it's just an office.


Oh well?

There are trucks in the pit, but they don't say or do anything when you enter them. I can also see a bunch of minerals and gems at the bottom but I still have no indication of what I'm supposed to do with those either. Maybe I can drive the truck over them and get a prompt or haul them to a processing plant?

Nope, that doesn't work either. It turns out you have to go back into the help menu, look up the commands for this job, and use the "mine" command to mine rocks. Finally I get to work and mine 1 Gold, which is placed in my inventory. I make no money, and I can't do anything with it.


So what's the point then?

I decide to switch tracks and try another job instead.

Changing careers
I set my GPS to the oil worker job instead, where I find -- surprise! -- an actual job marker, unlike the quarry.


Where was this when I was mining?

I put on my hard hat and work gloves and get a message saying my job is to repair the oil pumps. Shortly afterward, I start hearing explosions and try to trace them down. I run around the oil plant for about a minute or so since the positional audio isn't really that good and there's no map indicator telling me where the malfunctioning pumps are.

Finally I make my way over to one of the pumps, which says its health is unstable. Oil fires are a critical safety issue and so I, being a good worker, run over to the pump.



Where I promptly die because once again I got no instructions on how to do my job.



I respawn at the hospital, $100 poorer. I could go back through the paragraphs and paragraphs of text in the help system to figure out what I'm doing, but I decide I've had enough at this point and quit the server.

Lessons learned
Players need contextual feedback and visible prompts
Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things lists principles of design that are important in designing any interface. Elements that are visible will draw more attention from the user. Users need feedback when they take an action so they know what they've accomplished. There needs to be a clear relationship between your controls and how they affect the world.

In my experience playing, I feel like the script adheres to none of these principles. You are instead given a 200 page manual (the /help command) and for most interactions in the game you need to open it up, thumb through the table of contents, find the right command for the particular situation you're in, close the help page, execute that command, and then repeat the process for the next task. This feels very mechanical and boring, not like a fluid roleplaying experience.

Something I would prefer to see is a more contextual help system, which you could do in two parts. In the game world itself, there should be more interactive markers for players. The job system should be consistent where you have a marker to go on duty for things like mining, and once you go on duty you get basic information you need for your job, at least for the first time you play it. There's contextual information for things like garages, but not for jobs.

For the tutorial, rather than bringing up large paragraphs of text, give people interactive objectives. For instance, you could maybe spawn them in an immigration and customs center in the airport and ask them to "walk to the testing room," where you learn what roleplaying is and what the rules of the server are. Then you give them a short test to see if they learned what you asked, and if they pass you give them a passport on the spot. This brings me to my second point:

There are too many barriers to entry
On this server, you need to get a passport to do even the most basic thing like opening a bank account. The passport has a 1 day waiting period - or does it? Because the CMB forum says 7 days. This requires a citizenship manager to be online, so you just have to hope you can find one at some point. Worse yet, if you want to play a police officer, even if you get the passport, you need to spend a bunch of time grinding in the county jail. You can't do anything in the county jail because you get no weapons and can't suspect criminals, so if a riot breaks out you're apparently out of luck. Once you've spent enough time grinding, you need to go to a website, apply to be a cop, and hope you get accepted.

In light of the Argonath Vision, this is ludicrous. This is explicitly giving more opportunities to players who have more experience. By contrast, the VC:MP server makes this process dirt simple: you go the police station and you can go on duty. All jobs on that server, in fact, work the same way, which brings me to point 3:

The script should be intuitive, consistent, and not get in the way
The vehicle engine system still really irks me. In single player, and in virtually any other server, entering a vehicle's driver seat establishes clear intent that you want to drive the car. Why, then, do I have to use the engine command to turn my engine on? How does this enhance my roleplay experience when I can do /me turns the engine on on my own time? Likewise, how does a toll booth on the main highway to Las Venturas enhance my immersion? If it's just supposed to be a money sink, it shouldn't be this glaringly obvious.

The script should be consistent in its mechanics too. It's weird to have an icon and a hotkey to enter a property, but to have to enter a command to leave. It's weird to have map icons for police stations and garages but not for objectives you need to complete a job. It's weird to get a prompt explaining how to use a CB radio but not your GPS. It's weird to have two different commands relating to buying an item. It's weird to have three different sources of information giving you conflicting information about the same thing. Effort needs to go into making all these aspects of the server consistent with each other.

For the love of god please clean up the rules
The rules shown in game are deceptively simple, but once you get into the full list of server rules it's steeped with extremely specific rules and landmines that don't seem to make any sense. For instance:

You can not taser a player that is actively shooting.

The following are some examples of behavior that is unreasonable or unfair:

• Using trains as a suspect making it impossible for cops to reach.

The act of calling law enforcement via the 911 hotline that they will be shot if they pass by a public area is not allowed and rather discourages roleplay among the groups. An exempt of this can be weedfields where they are not in a public area.

A lot of these can be consolidated into a single rule. There are at least five different rules banning offensive content. Not every single situation needs its own rule.


Credit where it's due, there is a lot to do, and it especially can't be easy to add that much content when you have to deal with a language as broken and unsuitable for anything as Pawn. But I feel like there are some improvements that can be made with regard to gamemode design. I don't endorse reverting to RS4 either, I just think these are things to take into consideration going forward.

[Sawyer]

It's probably the one and only post in my time here that I kept reading to its very end.. and I can honestly say it made me feel guilty even though I have nothing to do with the scripting.

Hey, you looking for a job? I believe we could use an extra hand. 

[Nathan]

Great post. UX is very important if we want to attract new blood to the server.

[Chase]

I have never been more thankful for a topic on this forum than this. Not only have you shined light on some more prominent issues, you have pointed out a point of view that shockingly I have never thought about. Many devs, myself includes, have long been worrying about making features for the pleasure of experienced/veteran players. I think we are at the point where many veterans do not play for among other reasons, they have grown up. They got a life to cater to. Those who are still around don't join when player count is low. When new players are turned away from what you pointed out, we have nobody to replace the veterans who have simply got a life. It makes a lot of sense now actually.

Now for some specific comments:

The tutorial dives incredibly deep into minutiae that don't matter while the script provides virtually no contextual information.

I am guilty of being lazy when making this. At the time there were serious morale issues and more leadership issues that needed to be done before scripts could really be a concern. Hint: it's part of one of your main points in the topic. As a result I slapped that thing together in less than a couple days. 90% of the tutorial module is literally just doing the /help sections for you on a 10 second timer. There are no back buttons or any real progress tracking because while it's certainly doable in PAWN - it's a royal pain in the ass to do because it's a garbage language. I don't see how some of the more prominent figures of the SAMP development community borderline have sexual fantasies about this language and compiler.

The help system is basically an instruction manual that you have to constantly refer back to. As a supplemental tool it's good, but as the main source of information it's poor.

I can't speak for all who have worked on RS4/5/6 but I think mostly everyone, myself included, focused too much on using the forum as a way to document new features. I'm guilty, most if not all devs probably are too. I don't know what else to say about it other than hopefully we can do better moving forward.

There are many barriers to entry that prevent players from taking the most basic actions like depositing money into a bank or playing as law enforcement.

Most of these aren't ultimately my call. Your guess is as good as mine as to why we have the passport system and CMB in the first place. I was instructed to close the SAPD so I did. Then the idea was brought up to do the corrections officer to kinda give those who apply a chance of proving their work. I'm not a big fan of this idea as its part of the reason I joined Argonath in the first place.. to be a cop without having to bother applying. I understand the reason SAPD was closed to freecops, but again, not a huge fan of it.

Regarding vehicle engine: Because Kye/Kalcor is a die hard paranoid privacy nazi (because apparently privacy online is a possible thing nowadays, y'know?) SAMP can only use a limited set of keys that the game uses. See https://wiki.sa-mp.com/wiki/Keys. I probably will add a keybind and find a way to make state vehicles auto turn on. I just don't like assigning actions to keys that make no sense and/or would also do something in the game. For example if I assigned it to "E" the player's camera would jump to the right, because its that button in the game for it, and there's no way for me to make it not happen, nor can I assign it a different key like "U" or "K".

As for the ARPD site - you have you use .com instead of .eu. It is my understanding that Brian does not have the proper proper access to fix this, which is part of a bigger problem..

I have no control over the rules, and I'm not sure who truly does other than Gandalf... maybe Carbon? It is my understanding that many HQ's have tried to be patient and wait for Gandalf on a lot of things, from RS5 to even the rules. I think we're way past waiting for anyone above DL rank to do anything or have input in anything.

No one has taken the Argonath vision seriously because, it is my opinion and probably the opinion of many others that the vision doesn't work into today's gaming society and is formed from ideas from 2006 MTA:VC days of roleplaying with just /me. Basically boomer rules. Yes, I believe Gandalf is a real boomer. There are good ideals in the vision but it needs to be maintained, updated and be reasonable to today's standards if we want new players at all.

Final notes: I won't be active as much starting today up until around December due to school studies. I'm getting a life like many other veteran players. Shocking, right?  When/if I am able to, I will certainly see to it that everything pointed out here that is within my realm of control is rectified to be more friendly to fresh new players... essentially everything to do with scripts and not rules or things with certain groups or certain core traditions unless HQ allows me to do so.

One thing is certain: I will continue do this as long as there's at least somewhat of a playerbase that WANTS the script updates or changes. Reality is that this is a 14 year old mod for a 15 year old game. If most everyone wants the changes and wants to be able to play and enjoy the server, then that's all that I want in return for doing this. However on the flip side I will help or be more involved in other mods/games if that's where the crowd goes. It doesn't matter to me, it doesn't hurt my feelings at all if people want one, both, or neither of these options going forward. I want everyone still lurking who cares about the community to tell me where they rather me be. Want me to continue with SAMP (and possibly openMP)? I'm all ears. Want me to do GTA V? I'm all ears. Want me to do Minecraft, ArmA, Garrys Mod, Rust, etc? I'm all ears. Want me to go fuck myself? I'm all ears. I can do any of those things given I have the time.

Vote with your voice, because another thing that is certain is that I am done waiting for people, even Gandalf. Granted I have limited time, so I have to try to use it wisely because time doesn't grow on trees.

Again thank you very much for this perspective and insight stormeus. I feel embarrassed, old, excited, tired, and also motivated thanks to it, and I love it. I literally want to sticky this topic.

[JackDockz]

This is the best criticism topic I have seen in this community ngl.

[Bruce.]

Criticizm 101
Instead of bunch of babies shittalking to each other non stop. Try to make critic topics like this one. Very well explained.

[Stivi]

This guy. Thank you.

For the longest time, we have devoted resources and time to hack around these issues, instead of actually fixing the issues. Now we can probably not even edit /help, there are 0 forum guides being made by helpers and a bunch of outdated stuff in the scripts (and by that I mean IG, not the actual code) that just confuses players. I really hope this humbles everyone.

[Skecis]

Yes, yes and yes. Spot on!

[Bas]

This guy. Thank you.

For the longest time, we have devoted resources and time to hack around these issues, instead of actually fixing the issues. Now we can probably not even edit /help, there are 0 forum guides being made by helpers and a bunch of outdated stuff in the scripts (and by that I mean IG, not the actual code) that just confuses players. I really hope this humbles everyone.

Help can easily be changed through the panel by anyone in the staff team above the rank of Helper, thanks for the concerns though.

As for the topic we're actually here for thank you for the feedback and I'll try to sit down with our dev team to resolve some of these issues. Although I think Chase already responded to most of the concerns. As a short fix before we get the actual solution I'll assign our helpers to update the given topics where neccessary so there information required is at least in game.

[Commander_Cj]

I play SA:MP very.. very rarely, so I didn't read everything. But it would be great to see the same experiment/experience in IV:MP, it would be great!

[Bas]

I'll lock the topic and clean it up where neccessary. People please take note.. this is how you give constructive criticism. If you wish to forward your own suggestions please forward them through a topic.

Edit:
Topic stickied to be used as example. Will unlock this for feedback. Sarcasm ore feedback just to be negative won't be accepted and may be met with appropiate actions.

[Badandy]

Thank you for posting this, I agree with you 100%, I haven't looked at the SAMP server with fresh eyes in a while and your post helped me with that.

[AndyC]

It's funny to think that the underlying issues you pointed out have been present on the server for years and in that time no one has brought them up.

[Marcel]

Moved to the ideas and suggestions board, where this belongs.

Some good points were mentioned, which I will attempt to address in the coming period of time.

[Bennzy]

Maybe this needs a bump for current developing team.