Why did I 'leave' SAMP
Some catch up for people that weren't around or just were unaware.
A few years ago I left Argonath because I was tired of the bias, corruption and overall shit behavior of the general community, people only cared for power, being the best, most powerful, richest, make your pick everything was a challenge.
Servers within the community were fighting amongst each other, those supposedly in charge of leading the servers or community cared little for the people that played on it, the staff or the general community.
I worked my way up to lead stunt and team speak at this point, both had to shut down because support was just too minimal, I had no access to either of the servers to actually manage them, update them, fix critical issues.
I stayed as a webmaster as it's been a passion and I wanted to guide someone in to the system once someone capable was ready.
16 months later I returned to SAMP as a regular player, there was a new community leader at this point, Carbon.
I reinstated as admin, quickly became senior, then manager. Then a few months after that, I became division leader together with Bengt.
Server did good, we didn't have many developers but we slowly started recruiting more people, I did some minor coding work myself, and we slowly got back towards 50-100 players on a daily basis.
I went on a small vacation with my family, a few days in I got a message saying that "access was revoked" from division leaders, we weren't sure at this point what access it was but we quickly found out that all our access to the database, virtual machine it was hosted on, and even some in-game commands and panel features were removed from us. Apparently, we didn't need them, the developers could handle it (To note, this was instigated by a developer I recruited and managed myself, who went over our heads to get access and then lock us out). Division leaders could not do much on SAMP anymore, it took several weeks before we were given access to basic logs. To add to this, no development work was being done other than a windows update on the VM, which ended up crashing and required Gandalf. In turn causing 3 days of server downtime, which I could've told them would happen had they decided to work as a team and talk about things.
Bengt left the team, and I followed shortly after.
I'm telling you this for several reasons.
Working as a team, especially in a HQ position requires you to actually work as a team. This is something that only changed after Kessu, Senate, Warren and myself became community leaders. I was working with Kessu for years at that point, Senate was someone I was in regular contact too, and Warren was someone new to me, new to many but has been an excellent addition to the team providing us with unparalleled tech skills and a wonderful future to look for in GTA V. In turn we made the community HQ teams closer, providing close channels with the other servers and keeping in regular contact with everyone. Fighting with each other was one of the biggest issues with past HQs, people felt like because they were HQ or staff in a certain server they were better than others, refused to use the skills and experience of others and preferred going at things solo.
With that, I want to say that if you want to help the community it is good to remember that none of us is perfect, neither are we all cut from the same cloth. We all have a unique skillset and view of the world and how to do things. I'd also like to remind people that if you want a position that this is earned. Work with the team and show them what you're worth and what you can offer. You don't need to be in the server for hundreds of hours. I'd much rather you have a good personality and a focus on wanting to help the players and the community. Being in a position just so you can have power is not only a selfish move but it's also something you can see doesn't work if you look at the history of the community. Something that is also important is willing to accept feedback, if you work as a team people won't always see things the same way, people have different experiences so its good to remember that the whole point of a discussion is the variety in opinions. Badandy speaks a lot with the players but he also talks to HQ a lot, we give him feedback and together we shape how things get in to the server, to ensure its fair to everyone. No decision is made by just one person and you often realize things you didn't know before by just listening to others.
Like Kessu said on Discord, my DMs are open for anyone. On the forums and on Discord and am more than happy to get to know you and learn about how you can help us, and if you present something properly it'll always be shared with the team.
I'm also down to have lengthy discussions so long they're fair and respectful.
I think its also good to remember that we're all here to enjoy this community, which is provided to us for free. None of the staff have been or are expecting to be paid.
I'd like to think that most of us that do come back do so because they care about the community and enjoy seeing old and new friends and interact with them.
No one is or should be obligated to do anything, it's us who make the community, together. Everyone is responsible for what direction the community heads in to, if we want change we have to be the change together.
I'll now reply to a few of the comments on the thread to hopefully provide more context.
Add more HQ
If someone competent wants to step forward for a HQ position and is able to commit time the server they're free to contact myself or Kessu. But they have to make that decision themselves. We're also not going to just add HQ to have more HQ members, people have to be trained, they've to be familiar with the team, willing to work as a team. Plus they'd need the leadership skills required.
My suggestion: we need to figure out the identity of the server and the main core objective. This could be through missions. This could be through interactive interactions. But at the end, there needs to be a reason for why someone will want to come on. That something cannot be that they can get more virtual stuff.
This is already the plan but we're only one developer on a platform that has been crumbling apart, who also works for free while having significant real life obligations. I'd love to see the server expand but that all relies on the manpower behind the push.
I think part of the reason we haven't completely died off yet is that each server seems to be decentralized from each other. Kessu leads his world. JDC leads his. If we, as a community, decide that we like this model, I'd purpose that we continue evolving as a community and expand past RPG and to other game modes.
Two responses on this one. While the servers all have their own vision, the leaders and HQ do have regular communication and give eachother advice. The specific servers HQ is in control of their own server but we're definitely not as far apart as we were years ago.
As for the expanding from RPG, I feel we've already done that. I've recommended several servers and have even tried getting some set up in the past but a lot of that is reliant on having a good server to host on. At times the owners have been able to provide that but we haven't really had much control or ability over the VMs as we'd like/ need.
The new machine we use for SAMP is good enough for SAMP but we'd need a decent upgrade would we want to host different servers, but we'd definitely be down.
To note on to that, a reminder that more servers also require people to administrate and manage the server, which depending on the kind of game could be hard to find. Depending on the game servers could also remain empty for quite long while waiting for major updates/ seasonal times.
By the looks of it, this will be another topic that gets locked or simply dies down because of time, because since it's creation, which was a week ago, @Badandy has been the only one that communicated anything with players.
Why on earth would we advise people to communicate with us, and then lock their topic. Not to forget the topic has only seen lengthy responses in the past few days, and I'd like to take my time for my replies.
You also said don't overthink the question and you wanted to do a quick survey, which tend to take a few days to get answers.
I can't be the only one getting a bad impression here?
So am I by comments like that and seeing yet again a topic like this that was aimed to provide animosity and the them vs us mentality. If you want to help you have to give us something that tells us you are who we are looking for.
Just read through the comments of the thread you created and you'll see that adding HQ just because is not going to solve any of the problems, it'll just bring you the ones we've already had.
We welcome your opinion, your experiences and the knowledge you've build up over the years but you seem to not be willing to accept the same of others, just because someone has a different opinion or point of view than you doesn't mean you have to become hostile with them. If you can do better then put in the work and prove to use what you're worth. JDC put in a hell of an effort with a presentation and was clear he was more than happy to work as a team. I'm sure he and I both agree he isn't perfect just like I'm not perfect, nor are any of us, but working as a team and communication is a major step forward.
I'd also recommend to read Kessus message in the #samp channel of the global Argonath discord he made some good points.
Talking is good but blaming one another isn't going to get you anywhere. Also remember to use common sense, having an idea is great but remember that not every idea is executable, do we have the resources, the manpower or even the need for the idea and how many people will it positively affect.
I'd happily answer any questions but please try to stay somewhat on-topic.
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