What killed SA:MP Argonath RPG?

[TheGreasyChopper]

Before I start off with the point of this topic, I believe I need to clarify the definitions of a few terms I will be using.

Spoiler for Hiden:

First and most important – Roleplay. I’ll use the Wikipedia article:
“A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game;[1][2] abbreviated RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making regarding character development”

Roleplaying in SA:MP would mean you assume the Role of your Character and develop him or her and act out the way HE or SHE WOULD. You are NOT your character. So any personal feelings you may have toward someone OOC(Or outside of Roleplay for those who do not recognize OOC) do not matter. If your character never met them or heard of them through RP, he should be indifferent. This is why I believe Metagaming is a vital part of the roleplay process. To put it short – Roleplaying is acting out and developing your character’s actions in a realistic and reasonable way.

Activity – This is NOT the player slots being filled in game. Activity is the interactions between the players. When you go out with your friends IRL to do activities, you interact with them, talk with them, drink and play with them as well as interact with the people around if you are in a public space. To put it short activity is things happening, not people in game.

Powergaming – It has two definitions, both of which are valid. It is either your /me emotes enforcing a certain action on the other participant (e.g. /me punches X in the face, knocking out his teeth and making him unconscious). The other definition would be the play 2 win attitude, which is basically taking part in scenarios with the sole purpose of coming out as a “winner”. To put it in Argonath terminology – it is both “forcing roleplay” and “play2win”.

Now, to start off – you might say that “Argonath is not dead”, “We are active” etc. Yes, there are players In Game. But honestly, whenever I head In Game it feels empty. I’ve had more fun and interactions and seen more activity half a year ago when we had 1-5/200 players. I’m not posting this to trashtalk any groups, admins, HQ or whatnot. My main interest is the good of Argonath, it has always been.

Yes, SA:MP Argonath does have a decent playerbase nowadays. But there is no activity, no interactions between the players. Back in the day, groups and players actually interacted with eachother – providing enjoyable scenarios for all sides involved. Which sadly is something that has not happened in years. People pull guns, kidnap, beat up PD members just for pulling them over for a traffic violation. A recent example would be the situation with the recently elected Mayor of Los Santos. The person who became mayor did so only because they were the only candidate. People simply did not care enough to involve themselves in politics. What happens when they get elected? They start getting kidnapped for whatever reasons and I can only assume is because certain individuals wish to profit off of it.

In all honesty, I believe kidnappings should be monitored and limited as well as regulated like shootouts. I’ve seen my fair share of scenarios where people are being kidnapped for the sake of their tag or group they belong to. Afterward they proceed to get tortured and forced to remain on the scene, despite it being graphic. That is disgusting and graphic roleplay, which should only happen when both sides are okay with it. Very few people would enjoy their character being tortured and killed just because of a tag they wear. This generally made Argonath a rather hostile place for people, because you get bullied and tormented, just because you chose to join a certain group.

Another thing, which I believe is the main issue that lead to the downfall and decrease of the playerbase. The majority of groups at the time(mostly formed by people who were new) based all their roleplay and interactions on the scripts. You have weedfields, meth cooks, black market and notoriety, scripted properties and owning them. During the “good times”, roleplay was all over. You had people like Jcs and his Immigration Patrol. There was no script for showing someone your passport, nor were there any laws against that. It was people having fun and interacting with eachother. Mexican gangs roleplaying as illegals were running and hiding from them. They had scripted passports, but simply roleplayed. They wrote stories. The majority of the remaining playerbase does not engage in roleplay. You no longer have mafia families opening their Clubs, hosting different groups, cops, clans and engaging in club roleplay. You do not see roleplay races – it is mostly admin hosted events which are “go here > countdown > race > announce winner > give money”, most of which is in public chat or admin announcements. Instead of having it all being roleplayed, having people contact eachother IC and organize the race, inviting people with SMS and calls.

You don’t have people interacting with eachother. Everyone is driving around, sometimes growing weed, sometimes getting in a cop chase. They do not care for the consequences for their characters. They’ll die, respawn, wait out some time and do it again. It is insane.

One of the things that contributed to this is the division in a few major groups. Sure, you can say that they are different groups and allies, associates whatnot. But we all know that there are only three criminal groups and they have been around for the last 2-3 years. You may give out different names, you may act as allies, but the structure is the same. The mentality is the same. You have those groups driving around in their cars, fully armed and armored up, drive up to the weedfield, plant, wait the hours, harvest – go sell and buy the next property. They buy properties they never open to the public, they never use for anything else but a rendezvous point.

I can continue listing, but it’d come down to knit picking. The main problem is – there is little to none activity in Argonath SA:MP and there is even less incentive to join the server. Why would I go InGame, when there is no place I can go to roleplay at(Like GS9 for example)? I can go grind the script, truck, plant weed, mine and then go off. But this is something I can do in SinglePlayer as well with the help of a few mods. I do not go on SA:MP to play alone, I go to interact with others and roleplay.

My question goes out to everyone. What can we do to bring activity back? What groups and businesses would you guys like to see in order to encourage you to roleplay and interact with the others? What will be required for all those year-long OOC based group conflicts to end, for the sake of Argonath’s future? What turned us into script-dependent zombies who cannot use our imagination and what can we do to encourage that?

One thing I will address before it is stated. I recognize that I disagree with some people OOC, I recognize I’ve had conflicts in the past. But that is my problem. Not my character’s. Whenever I go In Game, I am my character and I should not be limited and ignored based on who I am OOC. Feel free to trashtalk me in DMs or Discord, IG PMs and public chat, you have the right to dislike me. But think about what comes out of it. Nothing. Just because you had issues with someone in the far away or recent past does not mean you should ignore his characters or automatically be hostile to him. We are all here for one reason, and that’s Argonath. Anything else is additional flavor.

So for the sake of Argonath – bury all hatches, start off something new and original, involve others and let us be a healthy and friendly community, rather than just talk about being one.


tl;dr:
My question to all is - what can we do to promote activity and get people actually interacting with eachother in a way enjoyable for all sides involved?

[Stefos]

 

You don’t have people interacting with eachother. Everyone is driving around, sometimes growing weed, sometimes getting in a cop chase. They do not care for the consequences for their characters. They’ll die, respawn, wait out some time and do it again. It is insane

This is the state of the current Argonath SA:MP server, no one can disagree with that.

There's no point in playing a ROLEPLAY server, if all you're going to do is come in-game, copbait for a few minutes until you get pulled over, evade and then end up in a shootout.

There's no point of playing, if you're gonna come in-game at 3:00AM, that's THREE AM if you're gonna just plant 1000 Cannabis Seeds to sell them to your bosses.

There's no point of playing if you're going to talk shit on public chat. There's a toiletbowl on discord for a reason.

There's no point of coming online, if you're gonna go AFK at a spot to grind hours to be the top on the panel.

ROLEPLAY ALREADY, PLEASE!

I'm saying all of these because it started to become an Argonath habit, it's extremely annoying believe it or not. It's a personal experience.

My question to all is - what can we do to promote activity and get people actually interacting with eachother in a way enjoyable for all sides involved?

My answer to this question is very simple.

If the things stated above annoy you, and you want to change the current state of Argonath, you can help.

Form your own group, get a few buddies, recruit some people IN CHARACTER.

Start roleplaying with each other, start interacting with other groups, make allies, make enemies, do whatever that fits your group/family better. DO NOT START USELESS SHOOTOUTS. Remember, you're a new group. Do not give people thoughts that you're just here to deathmatch.

Make a topic on forums, whenever you feel it's needed. Meet the requirements for a scripted /group.
Do not ask for a scripted group, nor make a topic if you're gonna abandon it less than two weeks later.


Small suggestion for ALREADY existing groups:

I'd suggest putting chat on your screenshots, hide the OOC chats if you're not going to use a program to write the chat.

Why I suggest this? Because if players that are active on forums, yet not active in-game, can see that there's a group that at least supports roleplay and that could lead them into coming back.

In my opinion, adding a few pics without a small line explaining what your character is at least doing is not entertaining at all.. BOOOORIIING.

If you're roleplaying with others, add a small "backstory" of what's going on in the picture.
It's not necessary to add it ON the picture, you can just make a spoiler and write it above the image.

Whatsoever, just a small suggestion. Not forcing you to do this.

[Badandy]

I just started a new character who lives as a "simple" man in Red County. He's not a fit man and he's middle aged, around 40 years old. He lives in a simple home who owns a few vehicles. A pickup truck, a sanchez and a skimmer plane. The plane was owned by his father who gave it to him when he passed away.

The point I bring this up is, I don't own an infernus or shamal. I also won't be using weapons like M4 or AK-47. My weapons would be like a country rifle, shotgun, and colt 45. These are items that would make sense for a character like this. I don't play here to win, or to earn money or whatever, I play to roleplay a character, to build a story with interactions with others.

The last point I have is people need to roleplay fear. If I'm going to get into a shootout with police (it's unlikely but who knows in the future), I'm not going to shoot til I'm dead. There's going to be a point in the heat of it all where you have to give up. Giving up or losing isn't a bad thing, it makes the roleplay better. In a way with these weed fields, it feels like a TDM with police and criminals.

If you don't want to roleplay then why play on a roleplay server? Also roleplay a realistic character.

[Khm]

Players should actually come close to other players instead of afking or hunting properties here and there and complain about roleplay not existing, what's too funny to me is that there are too many people in that kind of mentality where they don't even approach anyone or anything except for the main chat looking for an argument and they complain about the lack of roleplay and lack of roleplay diversity and creativity. This one is for the forum warriors.

Now the people that actually are roleplaying, there is also a majority that hunts others for their nametags, i.e. they see them from a distance, they read the name of the person they either get scared and avoid that person or go after him to cause harm to him (whether it's a kill or just a regular annoyance). There's also another kind that goes up to rob a weed field with everyone having masks on, the enemy group avenges the robbery and goes after that group (or hunt them down in cops case when criminals grow weed with masks on and go after them based on their nametags) although they only saw their masks. That's just stupidity, plain and simple.
We don't need rules to prevent that, we don't need punishments, we don't need scripts and we don't need admins to enforce it, players need to take the initiative themselves and act in a proper manner and sense during the roleplay scenarios and when someone sees that quality of roleplay, he will try to catch up and so will the new players. You don't need to have friends or a clique in game to reach these things you can watch other people how they do stuff and you learn from them hell think how'd you act in real life if it were to really happen to you in reality and what possibilities you have to respond to any kind of situation in the real world.

[Thomas_A]

What's gonna wake this server up or perhaps even revive it is a number of veterans or experienced people who're able to run criminal or legal groups, businesses and not just for a short period of time, but they'd have to keep it interesting for a long period of time. In order to do that you'd need other people, other groups, their leaders and members. What has happend over the years over and over is that groups have been opened with inexperienced leadership who're only able to come up with repetitive, boring and unattractive roleplay scenarios which most likely only lead to gun fights. Yes of course, these veterans are now old enough and they don't have any interest to the community anymore, but there are sure experienced players that are able to take the intiative and run a project. For that, you'd need to have a server, where the person feels like he's welcomed and where he has the oppurtunity to build something.
Would anyone try to create something at this point? That's a rare occurance because It's a risk people don't want to take, start something and feel like they've completely wasted their time in the end. Right now, It takes much more than just a slight improvement in playercount, It's the overall mentality that needs to change with all this aswell.

[Shorty.]

All of what's said above is correct, i'd like to add we don't need the must win mentality.

In my opinion, Mafia groups should be limited based on their work and activity, because everyone want to be a criminal because of the profit and powers they get or can get.

We need gangs, but we lack of players who can actually start a gang rivalries.

Legal side should be supported by the government/HQ so we can have criminals, citizens, and legal employees, how to implement that? by start funding the legal departments, not to grind cash, BUT TO MOTIVATE THE EMPLOYEES so new comers may actually aim for driving schools, or CMB administrating as a job, same goes for firemen, medics, and police duties.

Huge penalties should be also applied to criminals, so they can actually consider their illegal actions before commit  them ( Instead of just dying n move on, they should be sued )

[Stivi]

Metagaming really did a number on us

[Aca]

noobs which made it into admin/helper positions   

[Bogomil]

Another topic lol. Maybe people are just too busy to play games nowadays?

[Chase]

Kalcor killed SAMP, which in turn killed Argonath.

[badboy.dhia]

a killer 

[Lonewolf]

noobs which made it into admin/helper positions   

People just can't stop trolling when there wants to be a serious discussion, and unfortunately you are not the only one around here who does it when they give total 0 fucks about a situation, but I am not going to point fingers now. On the other hand, if you were not trolling, the only problem you see is the admin team? Have you ever looked at the players themselves, have you ever looked at yourself? What can you do to not kill this server even more, as a player, if you really love it and want to help it? The admins doesn't affect the gameplay, they just monitor the gameplay to mantain a playable atmosphere. If you really want something to happen, you should make the change, not the admins. Bring your friends to play with you, to interact with others and not just sit in your shell with all the money you have and cars, properties, guns etc, and say that you are bored or that the server is dying (Khm's argument already covered this part), the server is dying because of YOU.

Try to do something for the others, not for yourself, or just sit back and do nothing, like you always did.

[Aca]

Try to do something for the others, not for yourself, or just sit back and do nothing, like you always did.

I’m here for a decade, I earned shit I’ve been enjoying, it was not given to me just like that.

I’m not really gonna put any effort more, even I was more than ready to, why?
Because I, as a veteran (and I’m not the only one on this) was disrespected. By who? Not going to point fingers and start eventual shitstorm, they will recognize themselves.

My point is, show respect to your veterans, people who stayed on Argonath for years - no matter the situation, or else, you won’t pass well.

[Lonewolf]

My point is, show respect to your veterans, people who stayed on Argonath for years - no matter the situation, or else, you won’t pass well.

Yeah, and this is what I was talking about, thanks for proving my points. Selfishness. I don't care if you are a veteran or not, you don't deserve a special treatment, or maybe you do, because you think about yourself to be someone special. I will respect people that are showing respect.

you won’t pass well.

This is the reason why no one stays around the server anymore? They don't respect toxicity and trollish behavior so they won't pass well through the server and will just move on? Seems to be a true thing.
You are making yourself more and more a bad exemple, than I did, with every comment you make.
I am done with this. I hope some of you understood what this was all about, and that I am not pointing fingers only to Aca.

[Aca]

When you spend as much or even the half of years I (and every other veteran) did, you might understand what I am saying 
I don’t give a fuck to look as a good example to you, to whom I wanted to, I was and always will be a good example