Why did you leave?

[Lonewolf]

Mental illness.
I love this community to death tho.
Fun Fact: It's the reason I'm a designer.


I'll be back soon.

hope u are good mate

[Sawyer]

I'll be back soon.

Miss you like hell 

[Bas]

1. What's the reason you no longer log in?
I was no longer getting the enjoyment out of it that I once had. Most of the people I used to play with moved onto other communities or games entirely. This made argonath no longer really feel like home, but more like a place where you'd just end up in arguments for hours(from a staff perspective at least, I'm sure I had a part in that myself as well  ).

2. What can be done to get you to log in again?
Unrealistic perhaps, but since the people I used to log in for are pretty much all long gone by now.. I'd only log in if there's a significant playerbase around of at least 50+(Which I don't see happening anytime soon for now). Or if someone approached me to swing by with a good reason. But to be honest, since we always approached argonath with the motto: "You don't need scripts to roleplay something". It was the players that made argonath, and with most of the (for me) relevant people gone, there's no fun to be had for me.

None the less, nice to see Badandy's efforts to bring the server back on track, I sincerely hope you succeed!

P.S. this is pretty much solely based for the roleplay servers, if argonath set up a server for let's say.. assetto corsa competitione or something I'd hop on in a heartbeat.

[Jeremy.]

You can create million topics and debate about why people left and also why they are not willing to return anytime soon, but nothing will change and nothing will be done.

I haven’t read all the posts but I will drop my few cents as a veteran player of Argonath since late 2010 aswell.

The past is the reason the SAMP community died years ago, it died when all big groups started leaving/going inactive one by one. Accept it or not fellas, the main criminal groups kept the server alive during years, people wanted improvement, they kept suggesting unique and creative ideas and 90% of the suggestions were revoked with no discussion, with the reason of “itS doESNt fit ARgonath vIsioN” bullshit, sorry but I think most of you are all grown up, if you keep treating your own players like garbage, what the fuck do you expect to happen?

Some poeple already know this, for those who don’t know I will sum it up very easy to comprehend. The HQ instead of improving on basic script and giving a shot for at least HALF of the suggestions which were made based on constructive support, they started recruiting biased admins and creating rules over night and forcing poeple to play by the rules but with 0 information given before. So yeah, we all woke up one day when Argonath was a “very serious roleplay server” out of sudden and spitting thousands of messages “we are encouraging roleplay, its just that” on people’s face with no prior discussing with its own players. Dude, fuck off. Argonath was cool because it was unique in its own way, it was fun to play because you could roleplay as anything and many years ago you could hop in game, free roam and roleplay whenever you wish because no one was forcing you to. I just logged in, I RP as police officer then switch to taxi driver and then as a farmer. Its my decison, not yours. Years ago and a lot of people can confirm this, If some gangsters, mafia, whatever, were about to blast the shit out of eachother, there was no one to interfere in middle fight, turning his retarded red name on and asking retarded questions like “for what reason you are fighting?” ; “you should roleplay it first, did you RP it?” WITHOUT anyone even reporting. No dude, I just want to kill my enemies, why do you care? Both sides agreed to have a shootout, why do they need a fucking rp reason if from beginning their roleplay character is a criminal or having affilations within.

Argonath died becuase some certain cancerous people destroyed it, easy easy, with stupid decisions.

I would ever return? Definitely yes, with my brothers from Gvardia rolling the streets and being the best mafia from San Andreas ever.

[Astaroth]

So from what I can gather, the root cause of the issue is what @nathan said, which is the lack of sense of community, and all of that ties into shit leadership.

I am glad we could all get on the same page about the issue. Now, let's see if anything is done about the concerns literally every single player has expressed without leadership getting all defensive about the current state of things.

Thank you to everyone that responded. Your feedback is greatly appreciated, by me at least. 

[Kessu]

I am glad we could all get on the same page about the issue. Now, let's see if anything is done about the concerns literally every single player has expressed without leadership getting all defensive about the current state of things.

Why would we be defensive? We weren't leading back then 

[Huntsman]

The past is the reason the SAMP community died years ago, it died when all big groups started leaving/going inactive one by one. Accept it or not fellas, the main criminal groups kept the server alive during years, people wanted improvement, they kept suggesting unique and creative ideas and 90% of the suggestions were revoked with no discussion, with the reason of “itS doESNt fit ARgonath vIsioN” bullshit, sorry but I think most of you are all grown up, if you keep treating your own players like garbage, what the fuck do you expect to happen?

Finally someone who gets my point. If you keep shutting down your players with "Leave if you don't like it", they'll end up learning to take that advice sooner or later.

[Rei]

I am glad we could all get on the same page about the issue. Now, let's see if anything is done about the concerns literally every single player has expressed without leadership getting all defensive about the current state of things.

Why would we be defensive? We weren't leading back then 

How the hell are you still here I don't get it.

[Bruce.]

The real question is. How the hell are you all still here? And how is this still a thing.

From what I can see this is now a chatting community.

[Badandy]

This topic discussion went well for a while but now it seems like it's turning into shit from people who aren't even around anymore. Anyone who says we are following "Argonath's Vision" hasn't been around in a while since I don't care about any kind of vision or what the owners' wanted the server to be. The server will decided by the players, myself and HQ. No "vision", no other bullshit.

[Jeremy.]

This topic discussion went well for a while but now it seems like it's turning into shit from people who aren't even around anymore. Anyone who says we are following "Argonath's Vision" hasn't been around in a while since I don't care about any kind of vision or what the owners' wanted the server to be. The server will decided by the players, myself and HQ. No "vision", no other bullshit.

Good luck but you’re too late my friend. For me while I was active during 2010-2017 you’re like a ghost, I’m not sure you know what really happened during these years. I really wish you good luck, no joking.  Argonath needs more players like you.

[Thom]

Is it my idea or all these years up until now all HQs replies are like they're implying/under the illusion that the situation isn't desperate and that we're not going through the first christmas ever with less than 5/200?

The situation is desperate and has been for a few solid years, as soon as you abide by admitting to it then maybe you can lessen the gap between HQ and players. It's not like you're not good people or good minds, but it's only talking - inactivity - talking -inactivity from both ends and you got to be the example. You got to be the bigger man, minimize any ego and be present in action and in change. Even if you're carving the masterplan as I write now, you leave the players so in the dark it continues to feel like a ghostown out here.. and seeming idle when not, would be fine if only if the clock wasn't ticking, but it does and situation has gotten worse and now people won't even come for christmas.

Staff itself is nowhere hitting the activity check, staff has been half-empty for god knows how long. It's been so long and isn't like the subtitute choices are going to get bigger as time moves, so you hardwire the situation to have less choices for the near and far future.

And I mean it when I say desperate. You talk improvement and i'm going to be optimistic when I say that there's a foundation left to improve.

I think the keyword is adapting.

Don't have enough time to deal with server? Use time more wisely. Also use it more wisely to bring people closer to your ranks who seem worth it. Maybe you don't have luxury anymore to drag them through hell to test their character, but surveillance with such little playerbase could be easy in certain fields. Use it more wisely, show your face IG - it moves people more than you now.

Have time? Let us know of how you're thinking of attending this too serious problem. How many dimensions come at play? Why something is taking a while? It's not top-secret information to have dialog on the future of the server which we all care at some level. Come ingame not only as UC, as I said it moves people. See how you can make the server fun again without mechanical moves. Scripting is the salt not the food, sure it makes the food tastier but you won't eat salt as a meal!

You can never have too much healthy dialog, if it's too much then it's not healthy. If you over do it, it still stops being healthy. Any way you look at it!

[Brian]

-jeremys post-

Finally someone who gets my point. If you keep shutting down your players with "Leave if you don't like it", they'll end up learning to take that advice sooner or later.

I think most of us agree, including staff/ HQ that the way the community was limited and people were treated in the past was an awful way to run a place called a "community".
I also think a majority of the players underestimate how toxic the players/ staff were back in the day, players reported each other for everything and staff bias was prominent (remember that some players were recruited as staff purely because they were a high rank in a gang, which just caused a lot of inner conflict and misuse of staff rights).
You are free to RP as you want for the most part, sadly a lot of people use that as an excuse to be as toxic as they can or use it as a way to have a "play to win" mentality rather than enjoying the RP, and if they didn't win they tried to use staff to get their way anyways.

lack of sense of community, and all of that ties into shit leadership.

I am glad we could all get on the same page about the issue. Now, let's see if anything is done about the concerns literally every single player has expressed without leadership getting all defensive about the current state of things.

How the hell are you still here I don't get it.

The real question is. How the hell are you all still here? And how is this still a thing.
From what I can see this is now a chatting community.

Like Andy said, this topic went well for a while but people took the opportunity to use it for negativity and toxicity.
I think its important that if you want to talk about being part of a community and if you feel like this doesn't feel like a community then you should take that first positive step yourself. Yelling out abuse or presenting nothing but negative behavior adds absolutely nothing positive to this place and it just pushes away more people that do bring positive behavior to this place or that put in time and effort like development work for you all to enjoy.
It really isn't that hard to think twice about your posts or actions, just like it isn't hard to be a decent, kind individual.
I think its also good to remember that SAMP does not equal Argonath as a community.

-thoms post-

I think we all agree that the player base of SAMP hasn't been the greatest in the recent past but I think you and I both have a different definition of desperate.
I also think you highly underestimate the changes and effort that have gone in to giving people a greater voice, people no longer get punished just for speaking their mind (be it that they do it in a respectful way, which many still seem to be unable to do), server staff and the players have a much bigger voice in what happens on the server and players can reach out to numerous people to discuss things they have issues with, or ideas that they have. But with that also comes the understanding that if you want to give feedback, that you are willing to accept feedback given to you. I've learned an incredible amount from just listening to people giving feedback to ideas or suggestions myself or others have had because of things I did not think of myself.

I highly disagree that we've been leaving players in the dark, the SAMP HQ has been more open than it has been in previous years and information has been shared (mind you even in this topic!) that wouldn't have left the dark room of private channels years ago. We tend to try to give our feedback and opinion on things that come across our plate and similarly take in feedback by members of the community. And while we'd love to implement everything the players want, some things are just not viable or take extended amounts of time and effort to get set up in a stable and structured way.

Like I said earlier on this topic, putting people in positions just to fill positions is one of the main part of the issue of why we are where we are now. People ended up doing things they thought were right, without discussions or considerations of how that may affect things at that point or in the future, this was done by both HQ and developers and while some had good intentions it caused us with a lot of things that had to be fixed, polished or removed entirely because they didn't actually work in practice.

I've also made several posts about what our plans are about the future of the server and how we'd like to do that. But in the end of the day that all depends on the feedback we get from people but more importantly depends on the people actually able to work on those changes to become a real thing. And that's both developers, staff and players on Argonath but also developers for a new multiplayer platform for San Andreas. Andy has already provided us with some incredible behind the scene changes in our server structure and to me it looks like an exciting future could be written in the stars but that's something we'd all have to work to together.

I've also not used any UC accounts other than to ban recurring hackers for years, and JDC has used his UC account for just over 2 hours since he was given access to one.

And if you ever want to know more, learn more or just have a chat my PMs on the forums or on Discord are always open, just contact Afterpwn#5252 . I read all my messages, usually instantly, how ever respones can be delayed  depending on the day (as well as ADHD making me just forget anything happening >5 seconds ago).

Global Moderator Comment

As a final off topic/ staff note. From here on out, any off topic(Not positively providing to the discussions), toxic posts or posts that include personal attacks will be removed and posting privileges will be limited. You are free to share your opinions and speak your mind but you are expected to do so in a respectful way. We do not welcome that type of behavior anymore on Argonath.

[Cutt3r]

I left cuz

1. I miss old players. Nothing can be done about this.
2. People stopped acting with common sense and began basing things solely on written rules. This, I felt, was a problem - things got too complicated. I preferred an Argonath which used common sense to solve problems rather than going through a myriad of rules or laws for something. Maybe something can be done about this.

How would I possibly come back?
1. Make things simpler. Have been vocal about bringing back simplicity in the form of RS4 before. That was in form. In substance, it's about simplicity. This would probably help new joiners understand the game better, rather than commands to type and in what order.

Make no mistake, I truly value the work put in by all the devs. But if we need new people to join in, try to keep things simple. Just a passport and license system with few focused jobs rather than a lot of them, along with simple 1 or max 2 page rules in game.

[Bas]

I left cuz

1. I miss old players. Nothing can be done about this.
2. People stopped acting with common sense and began basing things solely on written rules. This, I felt, was a problem - things got too complicated. I preferred an Argonath which used common sense to solve problems rather than going through a myriad of rules or laws for something. Maybe something can be done about this.

How would I possibly come back?
1. Make things simpler. Have been vocal about bringing back simplicity in the form of RS4 before. That was in form. In substance, it's about simplicity. This would probably help new joiners understand the game better, rather than commands to type and in what order.

Make no mistake, I truly value the work put in by all the devs. But if we need new people to join in, try to keep things simple. Just a passport and license system with few focused jobs rather than a lot of them, along with simple 1 or max 2 page rules in game.

I think at this point in time it's no longer really about attracting new players as SAMP has reached the stage where you can most likely say it's veterans of the platform that are still around. I wouldn't be surprised if about 99 out of a 100 players head over to GTA V nowadays. So simplicity for the sake of attracting new players is probably not going to do a whole lot at this stage.