Where did everyone go?

[.Matthew.]

It's not all about SA:MP dying, Argonath could easily harvest new players if there was just something to motivate them to stay. And I believe the upcoming changes might do just that.
Currently they just drive few circles around and leave as there's nothing to keep them stay.

[Shorty.]

You all are tàlking about the negatives of RS5....


Well, in my opinion i think that RS5 is the same RS4, BUT its under development, thats actually a benefit for us, since we can suggest and give new ideas to develop the script, BuT the problem is with the players, i think that most of the players left because they lost their fortunes, and the others because they grew up

This server might be dying . . .  but all of you knew that this day will come...

[Frank_Hawk]

Ignored.... RS5 was made from players idea and it's still being developed with players ideas.

While I appreciate some ideas might stem from players, I wholeheartedly disagree with the full statement.

- There is no transparency of players ideas being prioritised for delivery as part of new RS5 functionality
- Legacy functionality which had worked so well from RS1-RS4 (i.e. /taxi and more) were removed at discretion of developers
- Players have no ability to vote on what ideas should be delivered and what is not required
- Players have repeatedly vented their frustration of profitability of scripts to no avail

Also on a personal note - the server is unplayable with the current lag.

We've been asking politely for years for developers to fix the lag, yet they might treat things like Telegram as a priority over it.

The lag is a critical defect - it is core to the server and core to attracting and retaining new players.

To recover trust in the community:

- Provide transparency of changes and let them be discussed and voted on
- Based on above point, make a priority list of changes for delivery into RS5
- Bring back the freecop system (new players typically always want to be cops)
- Increase no strings attached funding to large groups
- Automatic paydays through intervals throughout the day (more money, leads to more spending, meaning more activity)
- Fix the lag as a immediate and urgent priority

Sadly, while these suggestions might have helped before - I think we've now passed the point of no return.

[Brian]

@Frank_Hawk the only Lagg I have been getting recently is the FPS drops my PC decides to give me. Haven't had any server Lagg so far.

[Cyril]

Every players are free to vote and give their opinions on ideas board but in the end it's up to Developers/HQ to decide if an idea will be implemented or not.
Why? Because else we would have topic with: "Make a 5mil payday each hour" that will be upvoted by everyone.
It's obviously not interesting in the long term.

[Frank_Hawk]

@Frank_Hawk the only Lagg I have been getting recently is the FPS drops my PC decides to give me. Haven't had any server Lagg so far.

I have a i7-4720HQ, 16GB RAM, 128GB SSD, GeForce GTX 960M GPU and 30MB/s internet connection.

Despite the above - I still experience disgusting levels of lag and I'm sure many others do too.

Every players are free to vote and give their opinions on ideas board but in the end it's up to Developers/HQ to decide if an idea will be implemented or not.
Why? Because else we would have topic with: "Make a 5mil payday each hour" that will be upvoted by everyone.
It's obviously not interesting in the long term.

It's evident based on responses from the wider management that nobody understands the concept and principles behind prioritisation of changes. I would expect developers to understand the principles behind it and should they not for one or more reasons - it is concerning to hear, since the development team led by Gimli did.

What we should be doing:
In a typical project run in the outside world, change requests (ideas) are prioritised before they are developed for delivery. The business (players) determine the ranking priority of ideas (as the main users of the system) and communicate this back to the developers. They would then refer back to a set of system principles for architecture design to determine whether the idea fits in line with the vision of its future state (i.e. Argonath vision). This would ensure that any silly ideas (such as the one you've mentioned) would never be delivered.  Based on agreeing the change has met the entry criteria for development (overwhelmingly voted by players, technically feasible by developers and meets Argonath vision) developers start work on the change.

This recommended approach enables us to:

- Provide transparency on what each developer is assigned to work on
- Provides transparency on delivery pipeline of changes planned
- Gives developers proper structure and understanding in delivering changes
- Ensures developers don't 'pick and choose' from ideas


At present, we are missing development synergies because developers are 'picking and choosing' from ideas. Players are growing frustrated because many of the changes they expected are not being delivered. Its important to understand that developers are not the end users of the system. The players are, which is where the fundamental flaw of this community lays in terms of development and negative feedback from players. 

[Brian]

- Large text thingy -

I've got an I7 too, proper grap card, 4 gigs of RAM.
I've have not experienced any server side lagg (aka, got desynced, commands wouldn't work, etc) for quite a while now.

Back on to topic, I've actually seen the current developer team listen to the players, listen to what they want and what they dont want, what they want to prioritise. Sure the developers can't just make a large script (I.E business script) in a few hours. But those things also require a lot of work and planning. The old developers (as you said, Gimli's team) were the ones that promised such scripts.

This team actually listens to what the server want, are they working on an idea and they see the players make idea topics on it, and give good arguments, they move it up on their priority list. Do they see an idea getting downvoted by the majority of players, they'll remove it from their diary.

[psyron]

For the people who are saying SA:MP is old or anything, there are right now 3239 servers with 30853 players online..

gta sa is old but gold, but old. there are so many new and nice online games being released, a gaming community sticking to only one game is bound to face player crisis at some point. situations like this will be overcome in due course of time.

when we had dayz, there was a decent number of players joining including my friends and players outside the community, but alas..

[Frank_Hawk]

I've got an I7 too, proper grap card, 4 gigs of RAM.
I've have not experienced any server side lagg (aka, got desynced, commands wouldn't work, etc) for quite a while now.

Back on to topic, I've actually seen the current developer team listen to the players, listen to what they want and what they dont want, what they want to prioritise. Sure the developers can't just make a large script (I.E business script) in a few hours. But those things also require a lot of work and planning. The old developers (as you said, Gimli's team) were the ones that promised such scripts.

This team actually listens to what the server want, are they working on an idea and they see the players make idea topics on it, and give good arguments, they move it up on their priority list. Do they see an idea getting downvoted by the majority of players, they'll remove it from their diary.

Good response Brian, although if the team listen to what we want - why are we not allowed to see the full list of planned changes?

[Thomas_A]

I barely see any gangs ingame anymore except a few groves and ballas?

For past few days AoD has made nearly half of playercount (quarter for sure) but we are not a gang and for those past few days we've helped 3 new players to get started, so in my opinion if we dont help new players enough, ofc they will quit asap as they dont feel like playing here anymore. Cant always rely on old players coming back.

[Ivan_MC]

My opinion:

- Server was popular at the height of RS4 (100+)
- Management wanted to upgrade to RS5 (since last RS4 backup was 3 months ago and code was not maintainable)
- Players voted on the forum in favour of keeping RS4 and rolling back changes 3 months prior
- Management refused to acknowledge players overwhelming request to keep RS4
- Management pressed ahead with RS5 upgrade despite scripts not being complete
- Management decision came at a time of SA:MP popularity decline
- A large player base left the server
- RS5 did not incorporate the same feel as RS1, RS2, RS3 or RS4.
- Scripts/functionality were too advanced for the demographics of available players
- Economy has stalled continously with management refusing to sponsor key groups by imposing unrealistic pre-exquisites
- Development staff changed bringing a new vision for direction further deterring us from our heritage
- IC/OOC rise and invasion led to the server being split into 2 sides
- Large portion of IC/OOC promotors left taking many with them
- Remaining player base remains (often long term veterans who are getting older with other responsiblities)
- SA:MP decline accelerates (would you play Tetris if you could play GTA V?)

We've killed our server with our own hands.

It will never be the same again.

RS5 was the wrong decision, at the wrong time at the wrong place.

^

As for Conky's post ( I have problems quoting it ). Bro you don't know what you are talking, you are just mad.

[Stivi]

Good response Brian, although if the team listen to what we want - why are we not allowed to see the full list of planned changes?

I would also like to see this.

Though,

- Legacy functionality which had worked so well from RS1-RS4 (i.e. /taxi and more) were removed at discretion of developers
- Players have no ability to vote on what ideas should be delivered and what is not required

- /taxi was removed because it was bugged. I wouldn't vote for taxi to be implemented before other scripts. Also, /ad colors, but would you rather have colored ads and no chat script or no colors and a chat script?

-[RS5.1 Dev] topics give you an idea on what's coming next and how is it coming. Players are allowed to give arguments pro or against it. The development team will hear.

- Provide transparency on what each developer is assigned to work on

I would like to see this, but pretty much it goes like this:

teddy - supervises, works on different scripts
Mikro - logisctis
Marcel - Drug script
Spikmun - inactive?

I'm sure if you ask Teddy IG he'll tell you, unlike the old dev team who was always afk "working on scripts".

[Acika]

My opinion:

- Server was popular at the height of RS4 (100+)
- Management wanted to upgrade to RS5 (since last RS4 backup was 3 months ago and code was not maintainable)
- Players voted on the forum in favour of keeping RS4 and rolling back changes 3 months prior
- Management refused to acknowledge players overwhelming request to keep RS4
- Management pressed ahead with RS5 upgrade despite scripts not being complete
- Management decision came at a time of SA:MP popularity decline
- A large player base left the server
- RS5 did not incorporate the same feel as RS1, RS2, RS3 or RS4.
- Scripts/functionality were too advanced for the demographics of available players
- Economy has stalled continously with management refusing to sponsor key groups by imposing unrealistic pre-exquisites
- Development staff changed bringing a new vision for direction further deterring us from our heritage
- IC/OOC rise and invasion led to the server being split into 2 sides
- Large portion of IC/OOC promotors left taking many with them
- Remaining player base remains (often long term veterans who are getting older with other responsiblities)
- SA:MP decline accelerates (would you play Tetris if you could play GTA V?)

We've killed our server with our own hands.

It will never be the same again.

RS5 was the wrong decision, at the wrong time at the wrong place.

Word.

It's sad to see that a student didnt listen well and now he desperately wants to outtalk his teacher while arguments are impossible to counter.


Great scripts are coming? Are you for real? It's been 2 years and now the updates are coming? Of course everyone left, nobody has that much time to waste and wait for something to happen. Even tho some people were still there after the introduction of RS5, providing ideas, trying to help, they were ignored, banned, posts deleted etc.

The server has reached the point where it's lucky that it still has any players and instead to listen to those few veterans that still want to contribute despite all the ignorance, you are continuing the same old story, pushing the server deeper and deeper into abyss.

[Andeey]

Word.

It's sad to see that a student didnt listen well and now he desperately wants to outtalk his teacher while arguments are impossible to counter.


Great scripts are coming? Are you for real? It's been 2 years and now the updates are coming? Of course everyone left, nobody has that much time to waste and wait for something to happen. Even tho some people were still there after the introduction of RS5, providing ideas, trying to help, they were ignored, banned, posts deleted etc.

The server has reached the point where it's lucky that it still has any players and instead to listen to those few veterans that still want to contribute despite all the ignorance, you are continuing the same old story, pushing the server deeper and deeper into abyss.

No offence but you've been banned 70% of the time in RS5, and yes changes are coming, All im seeing in this topic is people moaning about there being no players online.. but half of them aren't online themselves.

[Sawyer]

All im seeing in this topic is people moaning about there being no players online.. but half of them aren't online themselves.

I'd say more than half. "No offence" but what is there to do?