Can we bring back the old playerbase count?

[drumj]

Eren has been an absolute staple in this community, if only you saw what this guy does behind the scenes, I see this guy as a leader more than anyone and his opinion deserves your time, certain changes need to happen and soon. I've halted any custom object work until I know we've got a reliable developer in place, I'm itching to continue but I'm not wasting my time.

[Klag]

Ive mentioned some of points Eren touched on. I even made a thread a few months ago talking about how lenient the admin team has been with player reports and how that leaves room for rule-breakers to go around doing their thing without fear of punishments. On the faction management side of things we have been doing our best to be as strict as possible with breaches of ROE and general faction reports but I still get the feel that doesn't happen in the player report section. A lot can change within a server/community but if we lower the standards it is not LSRP anymore, it becomes something else.

 

Another great point that Eren touched on that needs to improve is the activity concerns. I’ll give you my example, being a team leader. I have recently been appointed to IFC and im doing my best behind the scenes to make the faction team functional once again. One step at a time. I feel its in a good place to move forward but what annoys me the most is relaying on inactive admins/leads to be able to do my job. For the regular player this might look like IFC is inactive and not doing its job, when most of the times we are just waiting to hear back from lead admins or people with the right type of perms. 

 

I'm not saying I don't agree or understand the systems in place behind the scenes because they make sense but once people in certain positions become inactive, it hinders everyone else’s job. So the way I see it, those people need to be replaced or the current active team needs to be given the right perms to do their job. 

I am sure this happens throughout the different teams as well.

 

Despite everything, I do believe MMartin is absolutely right and the main change that needs to happen is the general mindset. Scriptwise, the game has never been in a better place and instead of complaining on the forums or Discord, people need to get IG and enjoy roleplay. Or is it not why we are all here? 

From my experience only people that actively roleplay and enjoy the game will have the right motivation to help behind the scenes. 

[Foli]

What Eren just said it's factos.

[unlawfulact]

1 hour ago, Eren said:

I'm happy to say what I think needs to change to see an improvement in the player base.

 

1. Removal of "Education over Punishment"

 

Right now there is an expectation that admins educate over punishing. Meaning a player can DM someone 2/3 times before we enter the space of actually being able to issue a light punishment. When I returned to the staff team and saw this, I was shocked! This is why we lost the standards and went from a "Heavy roleplay Server" and entered the realms of being more like a Cops & robbers server which is probably the best way to describe the current state of the community.

 

I have standards, and luckily I have a set of rules which I used to govern. - I don't follow this rule, I never have and quite frankly I never will. I am all up for helping someone understand where they have gone wrong and explain to first time offenders, but if I think (On the balance of probabilities) deliberately broken a rule, you're being punished for it. I owe this standard to the rest of the community that uphold the rules, play fair and want to get on with their roleplay. 

 

I know what its like to be roleplaying with your mates, and to have a dumb ass come up to you trying to provoke you to desperately try provoke a reaction to justify pulling a gun and engaging in a shootout. It ruins everything and creates the very situation we're in. (Barely any street level gang roleplay.)

 

2. Removal of Inactive and Idle Administrators & Testers

 

We have a large amount of inactive and completely Idle Administrators and Testers that are retaining their positions for absolutely no reason. I am all for people having breaks and having real life priorities however a large percentage have been on absence for months on end. And for the Admins I will break that down for you guys to understand in a more granular detail. We have too many Admins in key positions who are Idle holding their areas hostage over the title but don't want to actively work for it. 

 

Lead Admins: 7 

Of the 7 admins, only 2 (28% activity) have been active in-game. (I acknowledge there's stuff behind the scenes, but your core function is to Lead Administrators, and you can't do that unless you're in-game.)

 

Senior Admins: 11

Of the 11 admins, only 4 (36% activity) have been active in-game. Some haven't logged on in months at all. (One hasn't logged on the forums since October!)

 

Game Admins: 16

Of the 16 admins, only 5 (31% activity) have been active in-game. 

 

(To be considered "Active" you must have a minimum of 30 hours spent IG per month. For context, some admins peak at 180 hours a month.)

 

So when you look at the above figures for admins you have 11 active admins providing the community with 24 hours coverage 7 days a week. What this creates is admins becoming burnt out because they're carrying more work loads, people becoming unmotivated as a result of a lack of support, and this results in the figures dropping even more. I dread to think the state of the activity leading up to the new year. These 11 active admins are the same ones processing your player reports, refund requests, house changes, ban appeals and just about everything else on the forums!

 

We're too afraid to loose inactive admins because "What does that fix?" it shows there's a consequence for not being active and pulling your weight, it allows space for development for those who are active to develop further into the admin team. It encourages growth and development for everyone. (Chain effect all the way down which in turn allows us to give a better service to our customers who are our community. 

 

 

3. Faction Management

 

I will be honest with this point, I do not see Illegal Faction Management as a functional service as it stands. It is not representative of the community, and rather a small circle that operates around it. You have so many voices in the illegal factions world that are experienced, giving the IFM the very solutions to the problems we're facing and instead of gripping onto those solutions and running with them to implement nothing is being done. Or we're shutting them down on the spot. 

There are Official Factions that went inactive after a week of getting it, remove them and make space the the numerous other factions that are absolute gems within the community. This needs to be done because once the illegal factions give up in their pursuit you'll have PD pursuing SD until one of the two decide to give up. Urgent and drastic leadership changes are needed in order to preserve the future of the illegal scene.

 

I personally have been so put off from continuing my illegal roleplay knowing it will never lead anywhere. 

 

 

4. Legal Faction Management

 

One of the most catastrophic mistakes was the decision to move LFM from a full time person and move it under operations with no oversight from an experienced LEO role-player. Why a LEO role-player? The two biggest legal factions are PD and SD, and a great deal surrounds the two. Instead the role was merged across the responsibility of two people, one being the head of Illegal Factions - a clear conflict of interest. 

 

There is a huge issue with activity around the leadership of many of these legal factions and I have seen in the recent days a series of poor decisions being made about leadership changes. Faction Leaders need to be active in order to drive the faction, maintain and uphold standards and again provide the player base with a level of service! - Some days the server has 100+ players with 1 or 2 LEO's on, where is the realism in that?

 

You then speak to the factions, and the response is, If faction management can't be asked why should I? Then you get nothing short of civil war on the server. Legal and Illegal factions are the most important entities on this server, and we're getting it so incredibly wrong.

 

In both PD and SD we have absolutely exceptional leaders who aren't being given opportunities to lead simply because they're vocal and active and threaten the inactive leadership by outshining them, so instead of promoting them to run and help out, we're seeing them be supressed and ostracised to keep them at bay in order to safeguard certain individuals positions. 

 

Legal Faction Management needs to be owned by a Lead Admin that has experience in either PD or SD as a leader that can give them the full time attention they need, this doesn't mean dictating, this means obtaining feed back from the faction members, giving and equipping them to succeed. Right now we're seeing the polar opposite. 

 

5. Pandering to the toxic few.

 

There's a certain few individuals who keep popping up within these chats (Ban Evading) may I add who offer nothing of any value at all, and we're allowing their opinions and voices to plague and curtain the true issues we need to be addressing on this community. Some of these who I won't bother naming have been banned for a while for gross breaches of rules in-game and on the forums. Stop pandering to them and ignore their moot opinions.

 

Finally my message to the community, a shit ton of effort goes into this community by Martin and Michael (prior to his departure) and I stand firmly beside Martin with this. He often is called lazy and that he doesn't care or he's not invested and simply wants money out of this etc etc...I've heard it all. I will defend him till kingdom come. I know how much he invests and how much he injects into this community to keep it running and he is let down by some of his staff, but also a community have a significant part to play here as well. 

 

Stop the toxicity, accept it will never be like 2015 or whatever era exists as being the golden age for LSRP for you, we're in 2024 going on 2025 and we're pushing through during different and challenging times around the world. For many this is a get-away from reality. Acknowledge the effort going into the community, appreciate the little things and be constructive and productive about the future of the community. Remember, pressing the red button and switching the community off once more is an easy option - we need to keep fingers away from that and start collectively driving this forward.

 

If anyone has been offended (Staff or otherwise) by anything I have said, tough luck if the shoe fits lace that bitch up and own it. I own my flaws, and I will work on them but I will never give up on this community.

 

Eren.

 

 

 

So after reading through all of this, there are some very very good points in this that I can relate too. Education > Punishment I believed turned into this stigma of "you can't punish them, you need to teach them", I think it just domino rolled into this when really that's not the point at all, at least that's not what Nature wanted (from the short periods that I've spoken to him about the rule). But I do believe in removing the stigma for admins and not being able to punish players for malicious wrongdoings.

The admin team, I could rant for hours on this. It's crazy the amount of admins we have as a team and the amount actually hit monthly quotas or actually want to be involved. But, that should be changing with Mmartin's recent announcement in the staff section, I believe this is a step in the right direction. What I will say is you need to reward your loyal and active members, I'm not talking about myself, but you have admins that are eligible for certain positions clocking insane hours and insane forum quotas but are still being left in the dark and hopped over by people that are doing far less than. Revisiting eligibility requirements and rewarding hard working individuals should be mandatory. Keep your active people active, don't pray giving an inactive player a role will make them active.

I'm not really involved with IFC so I won't comment on what and how much they do, but with LFM. I'm going to say it's because it was a cursed position and we went through a new LFM handler every second week. But we really do need to find someone that has the knowledge, experience and expertise outside of their role workload. Izumi has a hell of a lot of shit to handle with being AHoO and having to oversight the entire legal team just adds extra workload unnecessarily and then it doesn't let the legal factions have the amount of support etc that they need during these times. My perfect example of this and it's going to sound petty would be the appointed of Kayayday as Sheriff. While I have no specific problem with Kayayday and how well they COULD do as Sheriff, you had plenty of other candidates who were ready and willing to take over the role, hell I have an entire word document and discord server with changes that would be implemented, rank structures, promotions, revision to BSSS and FTP to ensure a steady flow of deputies and so much more. None of this was taken into consideration and how I put it to Izumi, the decision seemed like it was a shoot from the hip and whoever it hits, gets it. There was no "What can this person do? What are they going to bring to the faction?". I know I'm ranting here but I know you have capable people like Storm, Eren, Cano all that have put in the hard yards for LSSD and have come up short for months and months on end with very little being done about it. A capable and 100% committed LFM "Handler" would be able to watch and look at these things and be able to be there in real time, as that would be their sole role, is to ensure the smooth sailing of legal factions.

The community seemed to of turned this into a "4fun" community and server as I like to put it, the level of trolling has increased, the level of unnecessary deathmatching and pointless robbery crews is absurd. I'm personally not too sure how to fix it however.

[swurvin420]

Been a long time member of the server since 2013. The one thing that sticks out the most is the lenient punishment or zero punishment compared to when the server was at it's peak. I remember being scared to break rules because it could turn into a month ban if you stepped out of line and Ajails were handed out quickly if you were being an idiot, in return it forced people to abide by the rules if they wanted to experience the best RP server there is.

 

It's been said numerous times in this thread and on top of that, the attitude from some of the staff. I'm not in any staff teams so I dont have first hand experience but I've definitely heard how bad it can be to get things done due to someone being inactive or refusing to give permissions to do certain things. The staff team should be filled with people that want to build the server and player base at the core. There needs to be change and one of the big changes it seems would be to appoint new staff and give them the powers that they require to make changes on the spot instead of waiting weeks to hear back from someone for them to say "[insert name] says no".

 

There shouldn't be this much bureaucracy for something so simple and admin jails should be handed out far more often than they are. It's a deterrent in the end. You used to see people being a-jailed constantly back in the day. I cant remember the last time I actually seen an a-jail that wasn't a ck.

 

Hacking seems to be a huge issue these days too. Everyone is a half time dm'er that NEEDS to win against their rivals on the server. It drains the fun out of gang rp because there's a 50/50 chance the people you are beefing with IC are going to block wipe you and everyone else in seconds using nametags and aimbot and nothing can be done about it because there's no anti-cheat. I used to be scared to install CLEO mods because it would get you banned.

 

This issue goes back to having staff members who care and are willing to a-jail and ban people suspected of hacks.

[MattRossG]

Another LSRP old head here!


LSRP used to be a vibrant and well-structured community, but the decrease in the player base is not solely a staff issue—it's a community issue. The downfall began with administrative abuses of power and the prevalence of inactive individuals in high-ranking positions. Over time, the community has become inherently toxic, and I have personally witnessed bullying within the legal role-playing side. Departing from the illegal role-playing scene back in 2020 with 99 GMC, I remember when LSRP was a dream, with people abiding by the rules and regulations that prevented serial psychomaniac killers from wreaking havoc and causing unnecessary OOC (out-of-character) drama.
 

Currently, the admin team has evolved into a group of people-pleasers who a very small view attempt restore the trust within the community that the admin team is still trustworthy but their attempts have been in vain. Many of the admin team are inactive. This pattern extends to certain legal factions where individuals in high-ranking roles contribute little but still hold significant power. This leaves the dedicated members who are doing the real work unrecognized and often suppressed by these inactive individuals, leading to widespread frustration and anger within the community.
 

Additionally, I have observed faction management teams comprised of members who lack a fundamental understanding of how things should operate. Although I abstain from commenting on IFM (Illegal Faction Management) due to my departure from the illegal RP scene, my experience in the legal RP scene, including involvement in tactical team elements like SEB and SWAT, has revealed internal issues stemming from poor management and inadequate administrative oversight. This neglect has allowed toxicity to flourish unchecked.
 

The community needs a reality check. Rules and standards must be tightened to restore a thriving environment. Once achieved, we can focus on marketing and showcasing the server again. This is not an attack on anyone but a necessary call to action. We must eliminate toxicity and empower active members while addressing the inactivity of those who fail to fulfill their roles without valid reasons. It's time to enforce stricter guidelines to revive the community.

Edited December 11, 2024 by MattRossG

[MeowTheEpic]

With all what's being said and suggested here, we can't bring back peak numbers again but we can maintain a tight knit active community if we can do a little bit of self reflection, both staff and regular players. Change starts from within, as long as Management takes the right steps to filter out inactives and bad apples off the team and the community shows a little bit of appreciation towards people that do their best to make a difference, we can maintain a decent PB. QOL scripts are nice to have but it's SAMP RP we quite literally only need /me and /do to portray anything. Transparency and open AND civil communication (Hey ban evaders) between the community and the staff team will be key to push the server forward in the coming days. It's always easy to blame someone else for everything that's going on, but I'd start with looking at the man in the mirror.

 

Everything Eren pointed out is exactly what needs to happen.

[Azuko]

Hey guys! I am no longer an active part of this community due to the egregious nature that the staff team, more specifically the faction management aspect of it, has been run.

 

I will not be pasting 4 paragraphs like everyone else simply because I am tired of putting mass amounts of effort into a dying community. But I'll gladly hit you with some shorthand information that will help you line up the issues here.

 

People have failed you. A lot of people have failed you. You're constantly being failed by your inactive lead admin and senior administrative team.

 

Unlike the rest of you with skin in the game, I have none. For that reason, I think it's best we do some name-and-shame.

 

Unfortunately, @izumihas failed you several times. If you've been active in this community, you may have seen this post 

 

But the response given by Izumi was "This isn't a rule for regular players to suggest. This is an admin rule." - That was in September. 3 months later and we're having the same issues. Last time I checked @izumi @Mmartin @badhbh(never even seen you) - without your community, your admin team is worth fuck-all. Your 'regular players' feed you, provide something for you to do, and pay to keep this server running. Kindly fuck off with the 'not for regular players to suggest' cause that's a load of horse shit. Your entire purpose is to serve the regular players of this community. 

 

You failed to serve the community, so you're losing it.

 

On the other hand of where Izumi has failed you, the players, has been in their ludicrous mismanagement as Head of Legal Factions. A few months ago, several key leaders of LSSD left within a short period of time due to extreme leadership concerns and issues. People that had been around for years and had put time and effort into this. A massive faction report was filed against the LSSD for mismanagement. I have put my response to the faction report in this pastebin link here.

 

Unfortunately, Izumi is known to be very friendly with Iudex and co, as can be exampled by how we were asked, and I quote "Were you involved in organising mass resignations or rebellions against LSSD faction leaders?"

 

THE SAME FACTION LEADER IZUMI WORKED TO PROTECT, HE WAS FORCED TO BAN FOR CHEATING. IN RESPONSE, THEY PROMOTED ANOTHER CONTROVERSIAL FIGURE INTO THE SHERIFF POSITION, WHO DOESN'T EVEN HAVE INTERNET LOL

 

The admin team failed Michael and now he's back to being Grey-Name Imperium.

The admin team constantly fails the playerbase and now it's dying. DYING. 17 players when I get home is crazy, when it used to be 250.

The lead admin team has been constantly failing MMartin and the administrative team.

 

Inaction from Martin's side speaks volumes as well.

 

 

Here is another example where you're BEING IGNORED AND BEING FAILED AS A MEMBER OF THIS COMMUNITY.

 

 

Horrific mismanagement and inexperienced, privileged, entitled people running things is what's killing this community. But what do I know. I've only been around since 2012 and have been in SD leadership for a majority of that time.

 

Let's rattle a list of people who I genuinely have never seen in-game or on the forums:

@badhbh

@bobster

@Dos Santos

 

@jungsaeo

 

The five of you are in positions of great power. Where are you in this? Look at Eren's post and look at your activity, are you inadvertently staring into a mirror? With the powers and positions you are in, if you aren't working to fix the problem, you ARE part of the problem.

 

Quite frankly, I applaud you guys for dishing out so much effort into trying to fix this place, but it's past repairable. The wrong people were put into the wrong positions under false pretenses and they fucking blew it. They waffled. They failed. They failed YOU. They failed MARTIN.

 

I applaud, genuinely, the efforts of Martin because I know how much he loves this place. Years ago we used to play CSGO and it was evident THEN that he had an immense amount of love for this place. It's a shame that those he trusted should have never been there in the first place.

Edited December 11, 2024 by Azuko

[Dat_Block]

12 minutes ago, Azuko said:

Hey guys! I am no longer an active part of this community due to the egregious nature that the staff team, more specifically the faction management aspect of it, has been run.

 

I will not be pasting 4 paragraphs like everyone else simply because I am tired of putting mass amounts of effort into a dying community. But I'll gladly hit you with some shorthand information that will help you line up the issues here.

 

People have failed you. A lot of people have failed you. You're constantly being failed by your inactive lead admin and senior administrative team.

 

Unlike the rest of you with skin in the game, I have none. For that reason, I think it's best we do some name-and-shame.

 

Unfortunately, @izumihas failed you several times. If you've been active in this community, you may have seen this post 

 

But the response given by Izumi was "This isn't a rule for regular players to suggest. This is an admin rule." - That was in September. 3 months later and we're having the same issues. Last time I checked @izumi @Mmartin @badhbh(never even seen you) - without your community, your admin team is worth fuck-all. Your 'regular players' feed you, provide something for you to do, and pay to keep this server running. Kindly fuck off with the 'not for regular players to suggest' cause that's a load of horse shit. Your entire purpose is to serve the regular players of this community. 

 

You failed to serve the community, so you're losing it.

 

On the other hand of where Izumi has failed you, the players, has been in their ludicrous mismanagement as Head of Legal Factions. A few months ago, several key leaders of LSSD left within a short period of time due to extreme leadership concerns and issues. People that had been around for years and had put time and effort into this. A massive faction report was filed against the LSSD for mismanagement. I have put my response to the faction report in this pastebin link here.

 

Unfortunately, Izumi is known to be very friendly with Iudex and co, as can be exampled by how we were asked, and I quote "Were you involved in organising mass resignations or rebellions against LSSD faction leaders?"

 

THE SAME FACTION LEADER IZUMI WORKED TO PROTECT, HE WAS FORCED TO BAN FOR CHEATING. IN RESPONSE, THEY PROMOTED ANOTHER CONTROVERSIAL FIGURE INTO THE SHERIFF POSITION, WHO DOESN'T EVEN HAVE INTERNET LOL

 

The admin team failed Michael and now he's back to being Grey-Name Imperium.

The admin team constantly fails the playerbase and now it's dying. DYING. 17 players when I get home is crazy, when it used to be 250.

The lead admin team has been constantly failing MMartin and the administrative team.

 

Inaction from Martin's side speaks volumes as well.

 

 

Here is another example where you're BEING IGNORED AND BEING FAILED AS A MEMBER OF THIS COMMUNITY.

 

 

Horrific mismanagement and inexperienced, privileged, entitled people running things is what's killing this community. But what do I know. I've only been around since 2012 and have been in SD leadership for a majority of that time.

 

Let's rattle a list of people who I genuinely have never seen in-game or on the forums:

@badhbh

@bobster

@Dos Santos

@risen

@jungsaeo

 

The five of you are in positions of great power. Where are you in this? Look at Eren's post and look at your activity, are you inadvertently staring into a mirror? With the powers and positions you are in, if you aren't working to fix the problem, you ARE part of the problem.

 

Quite frankly, I applaud you guys for dishing out so much effort into trying to fix this place, but it's past repairable. The wrong people were put into the wrong positions under false pretenses and they fucking blew it. They waffled. They failed. They failed YOU. They failed MARTIN.

 

I applaud, genuinely, the efforts of Martin because I know how much he loves this place. Years ago we used to play CSGO and it was evident THEN that he had an immense amount of love for this place. It's a shame that those he trusted should have never been there in the first place.

To the point and all backed up with evidence, open your eyes and wake up man people still pour time and effort into the server for nothing to be replicated by the people put in power, just a massive waste and a disrespect to the old great LSRP we used to be apart of. 

[Salazaros]

I never thought when i restarted this conversation that it would give a lot of valuable responses, giving @Mmartin a great overview of the communities point of views from players, staff, and developers. However, as @drumj mentioned, without a reliable developer, there's no point in moving forward. Simply like @Eren said that inactive admins and testers are creating barriers, leaving active staff overworked and unappreciated. Removing idle staff would make space for dedicated testers or players to step up and improve overall efficiency and activity. If the community wants to retain itself, it's time to acknowledge these issues and make the necessary changes. Working together on solutions and appreciating the effort being made will move the server forward, rather than staying stuck in the past. Without collective action, the future remains uncertain.

Edited December 11, 2024 by Salazaros

[gyzo]

Thread creator here,

 

I never knew that my simple innocent and casual post, due to my own reminiscing of what LSRP used to feel like back when I started in 2016, would start a discussion that will actually squeeze out what the problems of this server are, especially with the management of it. Became a full-fledged open forum lol

 

Just wanted to say @Eren has spitted some facts that needed to be heard.

[remmy]

Eren typing up the Holy Bible of LSRP:

 

 

 

[Kurdii]

Eren and Drumj for lead admins, the only 2 admins I’ve seen caring for LSRP on the daily👏🏼

[Vurtex_]

Eren, thank you. That's all that needed to be said.

[DJMeowMix]

@Erenknows. @Eren the G.O.A.T.