Thoughts & Suggestions

[Devin]

It's rather apparent that many would like to express their opinions but can't find an appropriate location to do so.

This topic is here for the community members to mention their troubles they are experiencing in-game, no this is not bugs but about the current systems.
When posting about a current issue or something you would like to see changed/modified to make it easier to use, it would also be vital to provide a solution which you see as fit.

All opinions and suggestions will be looked at and considered.
For example:

Code: [Select]

Problem:
I am having problems with the wallets limitations
Solution:
Simplify the economy or allow more money in hand or a single wallet.
Format is simple to keep things uniform:

Code: [Select]

[b][u]Problem:[/u][/b]

[b][u]Solution/Idea:[/u][/b]

 For multiple "cases" you may post more than one in a single post.

Those posting complaints and negative remarks will be removed, this topic is to point out what needs to be addressed, not to complain about the scripts but to improve them.

[Khm]

Problem:
Police jurisdiction is annoying and it limits the player to role-play properly specially on this player count.
Solution/Idea:
Remove it until we get more than 200 players daily so no one gets annoyed with those limits.

p.s do we can make all the problems in one post or one by one?

[Jones]

As many as you want.

[beLTa]

Problem: Fire Mission Bug, don't get money.

Solution/Idea: In my openion, monthly pay is the best idea.

[Stivi]

Problem:Selling to the script. ( drugs )

Solution/Idea:Increasing the p/g on heroin, you lose cash at the current rate. Really needs to be looked on. Or maybe, adding a restriction that wouldn't allow you to take more or less grams than set.

At the current rate, for a big package you need to get more than 41grams. Add a restriction that wouldn't allow you to take less than that.

[Miller786]

Problem:cant patrol with my fav partner because of juristiction system

Solution/Idea:add a scripted partner command

[Rusty]

Problem:
Jurisdiction System for Law Enforcement
Solution/Idea:
I had posted this over on the ARPD Forum Dev topic Zaila had started.

Instead of the script automatically assigning you to a city, let the players choose where they wish to be.  Now everyone will pick Los Santos right? Well set a limit of how many Officers can be assigned to each city at any given time.  So if someone tried to choose Los Santos jurisdiction it's show a message that "there is enough units in the city right now".  The player would then have to choose from the remaining two or go off duty.

[Hamza.]

Problem: Police Jurisdiction teleport - causes delay in command work and other immediate response.

Solution/Idea: Revert back.

[eymas]

Spoiler for First:

Problem: Dialogs which replace certain commands needlessly slow down the process, i.e. sending cash to a player.

Solution/Idea: As it pains me to say but returning /send in lieu of the dialogs may speed up certain handles if we follow the example provided.

Spoiler for Second:

Problem: Only a handful of stores work, and some do not sell the products that should be there(the phone in a 24/7 being one).

Solution/Idea: To stock the others, and to re-set the products to their intended store type.

Spoiler for Third:

Problem:
Mentioned the most; The jurisdiction system limits certain divisions and officers of suspecting players in areas where required, examples being kidnapping situations or backup calls in cities that aren't in the cop's jurisdiction. This also leads to complications such as officers chasing civilians and apprehending them; leading to the civilian possibly reporting the case as DM,

Solution/Idea:
Regretful of saying this, but as a honest opinion: The jurisdiction system has brought more harm than good. However: That which rusty had mentioned may be a solution.

These are what I can think of right now, I may post more if I find them.

[Mark Knight]

Problem: Jurisdiction system.

Solution/Idea: A simple solution for this problem is to remove this script.

[Astaroth]

Problem: Cut /groupmessage [name]. It's too damn long for the people that are in several groups and kinda complicating.

Solution/Idea:/g(roup)m(essage) [name] ((/gm))

[newguy]

Problem: Towtrucks don't tow

Solution/Idea: Please make them tow.

[JDC]

Spoiler for 1. Balance of User-Friendliness (simplicity vs. sophistication):

Problem:

RS5's implementation has jeopardized one of the factors behind the high playability of RS4, which was the implementation of sophisticated scripts in a simple, easy-to-play, and easy-to-understand manner. While I admire Argonath's streak of innovating in development and raising the bar for the sophistication of scripts, raising the level of sophistication at the expense of playability reduces the user-friendliness of the script.

A comparison I would like to use would be Blackberry's OS 10 devices, which have excellent hardware, but need improvement in the user-friendliness department; this has caused OS 10 to be poorly known and marketed when compared to other user-friendly operating systems such as Android.

The user-friendliness of Argonath's gamemodes is one of the things that set us apart from other servers, where (new) players are forced to go through unnecessary inconvenience. First impressions last, and if a (new) player finds a level of playability low enough to intimiddate them, they could be possibility demotivated from staying and progressing further.

One notorious example of this is the overuse of dialog boxes. When I refer to overuse, I do not mean how they are used to group the more complicated features (which is actually a good thing with medium to high levels of complication), but how they are applied to even the simplest options.

Solution/Idea:

Reduce the (mandatory) usage of dialog boxes, by allowing the simplest options to also have a command form, while keeping their features in their dialog box counterparts as well. Examples of this would be /send, /money, and /bank. This would allow for the retention of RS5's more complicated features, while keeping it easy to understand.

Spoiler for 2. Wallets, /pickpocket, and Loose Change:

Related to Item #1.

Problem:

Speaking practically, as it is the wallet system is currently nothing but an annoyance and inconvenience, with the sole purpose of protecting players from /pickpocket. In the case of /pickpocket, the vast majority of its usage involves little to no roleplay.

With the loose change restriction that bars you from carrying more than $5,000 on hand without a wallet, new(ly registered) players who go straight to a fire mission lose their earnings as many of them do not have wallets and/or active bank accounts. They do not receive any direct warning of this either.

Solution/Idea: Removal of wallets, /pickpocket, and the "loose change" restriction.

Spoiler for 3. Administration Team Activity:

Will be mostly quoting from my post here.

Problem:

Aside from Bass, Hyuga, Janar, Jones, Leon, Megamidget, Mike, Mikro, Rusty, Skalleper, and Slavik, I have hardly seen any of the other moderators/administrators (excluding managers+, as most of them have constant out-of-game Argonath tasks as well) in more than a month. As my playing schedule now differs a lot due to recent sleeping problems, this observation takes timezones into account.

A couple of admins laying low due to real life reasons (as real life is an important factor) at any given time is normal and/or acceptable, but having only little more than half of the Admin/Moderator workforce (numbering 18 in total) as active regularly is a problem in itself.

While I greatly appreciate the effort of our helpers who are active (in working ingame and/or suggesting/implementing improvements for RS5), one of our issues is server activity and one of the roles of Admins/Moderators is to lead by example.

Solution/Idea:

Simply put, the overall activity of the team has to increase as most of the time, there are 0-2 (most frequently 0 and 1) Admins/Moderators online, which is not good. I'm not sure about now, but at the time I left the SA:MP RPG admin team to focus on SA:MP Stunt in mid-2012, activity quotas (of >5 hours a week) were being enforced.

Enforce the activity quotas again and recruit more Moderators from deserving, regularly active players.

Spoiler for 4. Drug System (dynamism vs. probable gain):

Problem:

Drugs are currently very hard to collect, with low statistical chances of getting them even if you know all the drug spot locations. This is compounded by the bi-hourly random reset. While the idea of a dynamic drug system is good, the implementation is poor as your statistical chances of gaining weed (for example) are f**ked.

Solution/Idea:

Implement a system like Teddy's proposal to rewrite drug collection, which allows for variability and convenience while retaining the challenge posed to drug dealers.

Spoiler for 5. Economic Stagnation:

Problem:

In the absence of regular events, jobs are now the main source of income. The problem is that among those jobs, fireman duty is the only one that offers any decent income (taking into account factors such as nearly all players being poor due to the reset) for those aspiring to gain assets, which makes this the actual main source of income.

Meanwhile, the other jobs (except cop) earn poorly in comparison as 100% of their earnings comes from the pockets of other players, and are mostly neglected. This also alienates players who wish to earn decently, yet do not like the fire and cop duties, effectively reducing the "civilian" sector to ~90% firemen.

This effectively reduces the rest of the economy to a virtually stagnant state, as a result of the lack of ways to earn.

Solution/Idea:

State subsidy for the mechanic, medic, and driver jobs, so that they will earn more. An example would be my proposal to subsidize the driver job.

Spoiler for 6. Healing System (medics vs. food shops):

Problem:

Healing is now much harder, as medics are now the only way to do so. This is compounded by the low numbers of medics, as their job does not pay much. Additionally, all food shops have been rendered useless.

Solution/Idea:

Return food to the food shops and have the state subsidize the earnings of medics. Additionally, impose restrictions on food, affected by the type of food eaten (i.e: "You are already full. Please wait for a while before you can buy food again.") to prevent food shops from becoming an absolute instant-heal mechanism.

Spoiler for 7. Car Repair (mechanics vs. pay n' sprays):

Problem:

Repairing cars is much harder as there are usually only one or two mechanics on the server, compared to around a dozen Pay n' Sprays for the entire map. Repairing your car becomes impossible if no one is on mechanic duty.

Solution/Idea:

Remove the barriers from Pay n' Sprays. However, in order to keep the system more friendly to mechanics, implement an additional payment if the player uses a Pay n' Spray while there are mechanics online. To balance things out and help prevent mechanics facing pressure to go off duty so Pay n' Sprays can be used for free, the earnings of mechanics should be subsidized and increased, similar to the subsidy solution I posted in Item #3.

Spoiler for 8. Chaotic / Money-Hungry Firemen:

Problem:

Fireman Duty has become Argonath's version of the Canadians' ice hockey. While a growing majority of active firemen are familiar with and practice "Teamwork", where the percentage of the mission is divided equally between those who participate in the missions, there are still (and will still be) greedy / moneyhungry players who decide to grief others for their own gain in the form hoarding missions (some going so far as to steal sources from other new firemen, and we know about possible effects on new players) and stealing.

This directly affects players who are struggling to get ahead in the server. While past griefers in cop duty cause relatively minor inconvenience (from /su abuse and/or moneyhungry cop ethics) by giving jail time or a death/loss of weapons, this affects players who are struggling to get ahead in the server as it directly hinders their ability to earn (for needed money, cars/properties, etc) and could possibly demotivate the player from progressing further in both short- and long-term aspects.

What is even worse is that such actions are not classified as rulebreaks (unless carjacking/DM/flaming/etc. become involved) and admins are therefore powerless to help those who are affected by "bad" firemen, leaving the victims and the "good" firemen on their own to deal with it.

Solution/Idea:

Implementation of /fireban with the rights given to Administrators+ and ARFD officials. /copban / /bancop and ARPD regulations have been effective in dealing with players who use the cop duty to grief others, and this is something that fire duty needs as well due to its nature as something that can affect player progress in an even more long-term manner than cop duty, being the current main source of player income.

Spoiler for 9. Spawn System:

Problem:

The Spawn at: Random Hospital option has demotivated a significant amount of users. This adds even more convenience in incidents where players are attacked and killed during roleplay by rulebreakers, or accidentally killed by someone else while trying to go somewhere, causing further disruption of roleplay.

I experienced an example of this personally when I was roleplaying a kidnap with some Ancelotti members in Ocean Docks, where I was using the /ill animation on the floor after the Ancelottis roleplayed kicking and binding me. A random rulebreaker then carkilled me as I could not get out of the way in time due to the animation, and I spawned in an LV spawn after. The distance alone pretty much killed off the moment of roleplay, something that could be avoided more often if players could spawnn nearer.

Solution/Idea:

Spawn at the nearest hospital instead. If there are players who take advantage of this in a shootout (or worse, smartasses who conduct their last stands in front of a hospital), that is what admins are for.

Spoiler for 10. Hitman System:

Problem:

As of now, it is much harder to place scripted hits as hit spots are quite hard to find. In nearly two months of firemanning, I have traveled around the map extensively and found only one such hit spot.

Solution/Idea:

Add a method (whether direct or indirect) for players to be able to find hitman spots. Admins should, of course, have ready access to the entire hit system to root out any and all abuse.

[Pingster]

that's the only hit spot btw, so maybe add some more.

[Stivi]

Problem:No items on shops, no shops at all.

Solution/Idea:Provide every city with a electronic store, 24/7, restaurant, pizza-stack, burger shot, ammunation. it's very annoying having to to LS 24/7 to buy one seed. Add the items in these shops as well. Not everyone can buy properties, so not everyone can start selling items.