February Community Update - Ongoing devs, Events roundup, Marketing update, catchup with Mapping team & More!

Entry posted by Deceive in Community Updates · March 3

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Greetings LS-RP'rs,

Here's a summary of our February adventure but more importantly information on what lies ahead. So, let's get started with what everybody's been eagerly waiting for - the dev update!

DEV UPDATE

We're currently in the final phase of testing for LS-RP v1.9 and on the brink of LS-RP v2.0. Although there is no launch date yet, we anticipate it happening very soon! Version 1.9 is an ambitious undertaking where we're implementing several highly requested features, including the ability to purchase properties. Property owners will have the option to set them out for rent and adjust rent based on the tenant's affiliation, such as faction or company. Additionally, we are working on several quality of life updates, such as the ability to have multiple hairstyles (/hairtie) and /modshop for non-government faction vehicles.

For more information, please refer to our dev roadmap >> here <<!

EVENTS UPDATE

It's been another busy month for the Events Team, as we've been operating at full throttle since the beginning of February and haven't slowed down. Despite February being the shortest month, we managed to host more events than ever before! We've continued our successful formula of collaborating with factions to ensure events are not only enjoyable out-of-character but also serve as a tool for in-character character progression. We understand that while this approach may not have been particularly effective for all character types, we are constantly striving to diversify events to be inclusive and enjoyable for everyone.

We're also aware of the community's demand for illegal events. If anyone is interested in setting these up and needs our assistance with anything, please feel free to reach out to us. We'll be more than happy to help you make it work.

Here's a list of events that we organised in the month of February,

Midnight BBQ party (in collaboration with Hell Runners MC)
Redwood Lights Motocross Rally (in collaboration with SAGOV)
Vespucci Beach Jet Ski race (in collaboration with SAGOV)
Presidents Day (in collaboration with SAGOV)
Los Santos Business Expo (in collaboration with SAGOV)
Drift King (in collaboration with SAGOV)

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT TEAM

The Community Engagement Team has undergone a few changes this month. Currently, the team is led by @Deceive, with @CChef serving as the Assistant Head. We understand that marketing has been under scrutiny for a while, and rightfully so. In this update, we won't delve too much into future plans, as we believe that it's time for action rather than just talk. Instead, here are a few things we've worked on this month:

Spoiler

LS-RP's social media accounts are now active again. If you haven't followed them yet, we highly recommend doing so:
- YouTube -> https://www.youtube.com/LosSantosRoleplay [Weekly updates]
- Tiktok -> https://tiktok.com/@lsrpgaming [Weekly updates]
- Instagram -> https://www.instagram.com/lsrpgta/ [Almost daily updates]
Advertising
- We've started exploring advertising opportunities and have seen some positive results. Currently, our efforts have mainly concentrated on Instagram, and we plan to expand to TikTok and YouTube soon. Our decisions are guided by the content we possess and selecting platforms that align best with the demographics we're targeting.
New homepage/Landing page [BETA]
- Although this update likely belongs in the development section, we're excited to announce it here! Thanks to the hard work of the dev team, we now have a beta landing page/homepage that will aid us in player acquisition. A huge shoutout to the dev team for accomplishing this feat while being incredibly busy with LS-RP v1.9 and 2.0 development.
Feature documentations and wiki articles:
- While this is time-consuming and we don't have much to show right now, when 1.9 is released, it will be accompanied by feature documentations at the least.
A holistic approach to tackle in-game issues:
- This may sound fancy, but at its core, it involves collaborating with other teams to ensure that features are easily accessible to players. For example, the "The Los Santos Business Expo" event was a collaboration with the Company Team and Events Team through SAGOV to promote businesses in-game. Currently, four out of the 7-8 fully furnished businesses available for leasing have received applications after the event, and we expect this to improve the overall RP atmosphere.
  
  Similarly, we are planning mini-events alongside 1.9 to both enhance the RP experience and highlight the features being implemented. We will do our best to accommodate the diverse RP styles so that these events also benefit your character's story/entity's progression.

We are aware of the numerous suggestions that the community has put forward, including e-mail campaigns/newsletters, rebranding etc.

Some suggestions may not come to fruition, and others will require time to implement, while some changes may be noticeable immediately. To utilize our time and resources efficiently, we will prioritize strategies that can be implemented independently and swiftly. For instance, focusing on social media accounts and advertising on social media was given higher priority over weekly newsletters as the latter required a dedicated personnel from the dev team to set up the infrastructure. However, we will continue to work on implementing the infrastructure and getting the show on the road while ensuring that ongoing projects do not come to a halt.

How can we join Community Engagement Team?

Spoiler

Several LS-RP players have generously volunteered to assist us, and we are incredibly thankful for your continued support, dedication, and interest. However, we have currently closed recruitment for the team. This decision is primarily because we aim to shift our focus from brainstorming to executing the ideas that have been discussed for months without coming to fruition. As mentioned earlier, our emphasis is on practical execution rather than spending excessive time on planning and falling into the trap of overthinking.

We plan to reopen our recruitment soon, but only after we have stabilized our social media presence, completed feature documentations, and updated wiki articles. This will give us a clearer understanding of what works and what doesn't, helping to prevent teammates from stepping on each other's toes and avoiding de-motivation.

We also highly recommend posting your RP screenshots/videos in #media channel of our discord as it'll be immensly helpful for us to with social media posts.

MAPPING TEAM UPDATE

First and foremost, the mapping team leadership has recently changed, laying the foundation for new mapping opportunities, projects and processes. The new leadership will prioritize projects based on server interest, revitalize the mapping request process, and commit to growing our team. The team as a whole, especially Caledonite, would like to express the deepest and sincerest gratitude to Sparkles and kaibr for their tireless efforts and overall everything they contributed to both the team and the server as whole. We hope to see them both back someday.

Our new mapping team leadership will consist of @Caledonite as the mapping team leader, and @MAK0 as the assistant mapping team leader.

One of our main priorities is going to be getting apartment complexes furnished, including /bareswitch-able units. Eventually every apartment complex will retire the default apartment complex interior. More information is to come in the future. We will also be focusing on government interiors, getting them shaped up from the last time they had any type of furnishing started. Some of these were left as unfinished projects, but we will be revisiting these and getting them mapped as well.

We are also looking for any new mappers to join the team!

This is a great opportunity to show your creativity off. If any community or staff member wants to showcase any mapping examples they have through furnishing or any other type of mapping method, or if you have any questions about the mapping team, please feel free to contact Caledonite and MAK0 about it. We will answer any type of question or inquiry to the best of our ability.

STAFF UPDATE

Congratulations to our newly promoted staff members!

Senior Admin
bobster
Izumi

Game Admin
Helius

Trainee Admin
ScubaStef

Finally, we'd like to conclude this month's update thanking everybody once again for sticking with us through thick and thin. We understand that the journey hasn't been an easy one but we will make sure that it will be a fulfilling one.