Radical Measures to combat the Low & Decreasing Playerbase.

[Cocoon]

17 minutes ago, alessandroooo said:

I hope "soon" means "in max 1-2 days" because the server yesterday struggled to even keep more than 50 players on-line.

I have heard this a lot, even the day we hit 120. The PB fluctuates and my group and I are still having fun by creating interesting scenarios. I don't believe you need 600 players to have fun, since most scenes barely hit 10 (except for clubs, etc.). It's all a psychological issue: if you see players on, you think there is a lot going on and give more "value" to the product since more people are "buying" it. I am not denying there are things that MUST be done, nor that there aren't any issues whatsoever (I am not that delusional), but sometimes people tend to forget that features can be good looking, with a nice UI and aesthetic, but if the mentality and the ability to create RP out of nothing isn't there, then no script will be sufficient enough, because people will always find something to complain about. 

I have led a community that averaged 80-90 players, with isolated peaks of 180-200, and despite being low according to the average LS-RP player, we managed to last several years uninterrupted with an overall good quality of RP and entertainment. I know what I am talking about, because I have witnessed it happening, both as an administrator and as a player. 

So is it a "skill issue"? Definitely, couple that with an objective need to restructure some features and implement new ones and you have a clear picture of the current situation. I don't put ALL the blame on the Dev or Management Teams, and I am not saying that just because I am a Tester. I have no filters when it comes to providing objective feedback. Some players are responsible too, although they might not want to hear that (after all, who wants to accept criticism if not a minority?).

Edited August 24, 2023 by Cocoon

[alessandroooo]

4 hours ago, Cocoon said:

I have heard this a lot, even the day we hit 120. The PB fluctuates and my group and I are still having fun by creating interesting scenarios. I 

Respectfully talking, what is the roleplay you are talking about? Hanging at the bar until end of the shift then wait for another to open up? I've said it somewhere else too: im the type of roleplayer who only needs /me command, i use my imagination everytime i roleplay so the part about features n UIs really doesn't work with me nor does the rest you sent here. Tho im not the whole playerbase. I'm SOLO roleplaying since the ddossing or whatever network issues started and it can be fine for a day, then you need players. Gangs don't log in, you pretty much have nothing to do. You need players, not just "create your rp", means nothing... It's a fact. 150 players for me is fine because those we've had were actively roleplaying in the streets, server was feeling alive unlike that crap world with 10x times the users online.

Edited August 24, 2023 by alessandroooo

[1x1]

Just rebuild the GTA San Andreas Los Santos map. 

[.445]

On 8/21/2023 at 12:58 PM, Jerome said:

Here are some of the few requests for IAB that have been made for questionable incidents;

 

Anytime LE related complaints are brought up you seem to always have a some sort of justification or defense as to why said issue is wrong and LE is in fact not in any way a "problem". There's too many cops on this damn server, maybe you should try to be more open to criticism instead of constantly making excuses for this over inflated LE.

[Jerome]

3 minutes ago, .445 said:

Anytime LE related complaints are brought up you seem to always have a some sort of justification or defense as to why said issue is wrong and LE is in fact not in any way a "problem". There's too many cops on this damn server, maybe you should try to be more open to criticism instead of constantly making excuses for this over inflated LE.

 

As a member of the command team, I'm always supposed to have a defense or justification as to why a specific policy is in place or why we do things the way we do things. If you lead a faction I'd expect you to be able to do the same. No excuses were given because there was nothing to be excused for, no mistakes were made. An allegation was made, I proved the allegation to be untrue with screenshots showing otherwise. You should try to be more open yourself and understand that nobody is gonna submit to your passive aggressiveness nor is anyone obligated to support your opinion. If you don't like what I've said respectfully you don't have to read it nor respond to it. 

[.445]

3 minutes ago, Jerome said:

 

As a member of the command team, I'm always supposed to have a defense or justification as to why a specific policy is in place or why we do things the way we do things. If you lead a faction I'd expect you to be able to do the same. No excuses were given because there was nothing to be excused for, no mistakes were made. An allegation was made, I proved the allegation to be untrue with screenshots showing otherwise. You should try to be more open yourself and understand that nobody is gonna submit to your passive aggressiveness nor is anyone obligated to support your opinion. If you don't like what I've said respectfully you don't have to read it nor respond to it. 

 

That's not the point brother. We're trying to improve the quality of this roleplay and MANY players have said the same thing over and over.

 

Answer this: Do you think the current roster of LE players is overinflated in correlation to our current PB? 

 

I tend to agree with what someone previously commented, I don't know why we have LSSD and LSPD with such a small PB. We should remove LSSD as a whole and just focus on LSPD until player count grows. What are your thoughts on this?

[Jerome]

23 minutes ago, .445 said:

 

That's not the point brother. We're trying to improve the quality of this roleplay and MANY players have said the same thing over and over.

 

Answer this: Do you think the current roster of LE players is overinflated in correlation to our current PB? 

 

I tend to agree with what someone previously commented, I don't know why we have LSSD and LSPD with such a small PB. We should remove LSSD as a whole and just focus on LSPD until player count grows. What are your thoughts on this?

 

I think there are quite a lot of cops on this server, however not many have been recruited since the first month of the server. These are the same people that were here since day 1. They remained active and still do til this day, and it's not their fault that the gang roleplay and civilian scene took a massive decline. There is no way to fix the current ratio of cops to civilians at the moment outside of trying to retain what little criminal roleplayers and civilians we have left and rebuilding those scenes. Removing them isn't the logical way to go about it. What are you gonna do? Tell people who have done absolutely nothing wrong that people are pissed off because they now massively outnumber the civilians so they gotta go? Absolutely not. Did we take guns away from gangs who (and I highly doubt you can argue that this isn't true) blatantly abused them? No. We looked for ways to guide them into promoting more suitable roleplay and came up with ideas on how administration could start punishing repeat offenders.

 

Why don't we close LSSD and have just PD?

 

Well for one, there are a lot things internally between both factions that have gone down behind the scenes that people don't know about. Some people have moved to either PD or SD to get away from others while some just don't like the way the other faction is run, and that's okay. There is no way to merge the factions into one without a complete restructuring of the rank and file without pissing people off. How would you like it if you've put in 100+ hours of forum work and in-game work and grinded your way to a position that is no longer needed post faction merge? I know if it were me I'd just not play. These are things you have to take into account. You have to look at it from both sides, not just one. You're looking at it from an outsider's point of view. The most common way people look at PD vs SD is this;

 

PD is the main faction, we roleplay in Los Santos (the city)

SD are sheriff's, they belong in the county or patrolling a highway

 

 

Right now, SD's numbers (even while we were still peaking 150-200 players) are always higher. Maybe some people just prefer SD over PD for the purpose of wanting to roleplay as a deputy sheriff / LASD counterpart while less want to roleplay as a PD officer / LAPD counterpart. 

 

My question to you now is this;

 

Why close the LSSD? Why not close PD and have SD stay if they are and have always been more active since launch? I'm not asking the question as a means of wanting to know which is better. I'm just curious as to why you want PD to stay over SD. 

Edited September 2, 2023 by Jerome

[Jerome]

Also another question;

 

IF the decision to close LSSD down was made, what stops former SD members from transferring to PD? You're still gonna have all these cops regardless if that's the case.

Edited September 2, 2023 by Jerome

[.445]

10 minutes ago, Jerome said:

Also another question;

 

IF the decision to close LSSD down was made, what stops former SD members from transferring to PD? You're still gonna have all these cops regardless if that's the case.

 

As far as your question, that's up to you guys in the case that we were to remove one. I could care less, the job is the same ultimately which is the legal enforcement of law and order. So whether it be just LSSD or LSPD I think we should focus on one entity right now.

 

Also, I agree with what you said as far as lowering police count. We can't disregard these players who put in time and work. As a player outside of LE (something YOU guys don't see), I encounter way more police than I do the average role player on any given day, tbh. I go to Strawberry/Davis and see more cruisers than gangs. Am I being biased? Idk. I'm purely giving you my observations. Regardless, I think it's a valid argument to say that the amount of LE players vs every other player is a little excessive, and breaks immersion many times. 

 

I don't know the solution. I come in-game and role play to my best ability and that's how I contribute to the progression of this server. I found myself as a dedicated player finding it extremely hard (the will to want to come ig and produce some form of RP) to do that for many reasons and something needs to change, that or maybe I'm just the issue but by the looks of this topic I don't think this is it if everyone has similar sentiments.

Edited September 2, 2023 by .445

[Jerome]

46 minutes ago, .445 said:

 

As far as your question, that's up to you guys in the case that we were to remove one. I could care less, the job is the same ultimately which is the legal enforcement of law and order. So whether it be just LSSD or LSPD I think we should focus on one entity right now.

 

 I go to Strawberry/Davis and see more cruisers than gangs. Am I being biased? Idk. I'm purely giving you my observations. Regardless, I think it's a valid argument to say that the amount of LE players vs every other player is a little excessive, and breaks immersion many times. 

 

 

The issue is, what does closing one faction down and sticking with just one do for the community? Making a decision like that doesn't really change much because the people from the previous faction can just flock over to the next one. You'll still have a bunch of cops. A change like that is just gonna piss off a lot of people because they have to move over and will likely have to deal with rank restructuring. 

 

As far as why there's more cops in Davis than gangs, that's because they all quit for reasons outside of LEO roleplayers' doing. They were unhappy with the way things were going with the server and left.

Edited September 2, 2023 by Jerome

[Mikey]

4 hours ago, Jerome said:

 

I think there are quite a lot of cops on this server, however not many have been recruited since the first month of the server. These are the same people that were here since day 1. They remained active and still do til this day, and it's not their fault that the gang roleplay and civilian scene took a massive decline. There is no way to fix the current ratio of cops to civilians at the moment outside of trying to retain what little criminal roleplayers and civilians we have left and rebuilding those scenes. Removing them isn't the logical way to go about it. What are you gonna do? Tell people who have done absolutely nothing wrong that people are pissed off because they now massively outnumber the civilians so they gotta go? Absolutely not. Did we take guns away from gangs who (and I highly doubt you can argue that this isn't true) blatantly abused them? No. We looked for ways to guide them into promoting more suitable roleplay and came up with ideas on how administration could start punishing repeat offenders.

 

Why don't we close LSSD and have just PD?

 

Well for one, there are a lot things internally between both factions that have gone down behind the scenes that people don't know about. Some people have moved to either PD or SD to get away from others while some just don't like the way the other faction is run, and that's okay. There is no way to merge the factions into one without a complete restructuring of the rank and file without pissing people off. How would you like it if you've put in 100+ hours of forum work and in-game work and grinded your way to a position that is no longer needed post faction merge? I know if it were me I'd just not play. These are things you have to take into account. You have to look at it from both sides, not just one. You're looking at it from an outsider's point of view. The most common way people look at PD vs SD is this;

 

PD is the main faction, we roleplay in Los Santos (the city)

SD are sheriff's, they belong in the county or patrolling a highway

 

 

Right now, SD's numbers (even while we were still peaking 150-200 players) are always higher. Maybe some people just prefer SD over PD for the purpose of wanting to roleplay as a deputy sheriff / LASD counterpart while less want to roleplay as a PD officer / LAPD counterpart. 

 

My question to you now is this;

 

Why close the LSSD? Why not close PD and have SD stay if they are and have always been more active since launch? I'm not asking the question as a means of wanting to know which is better. I'm just curious as to why you want PD to stay over SD. 

 

Funny of you to mention how SD has "always" been more active than PD. I can recall multiple times where PD has been way more active than SD so I'd suggest for you to open your eyes and realize that most people do not enjoy playing when the number of cops exceeds the civilians and illegal roleplayers.

 

Clearly if there was a choice to pick between PD and SD then the LSPD would be the obvious one considering we are roleplaying in the city and it wouldn't make sense to have a sheriff's department patrol LS, that's why.

[Huckleberry]

1 hour ago, Mikey said:

 

Funny of you to mention how SD has "always" been more active than PD. I can recall multiple times where PD has been way more active than SD so I'd suggest for you to open your eyes and realize that most people do not enjoy playing when the number of cops exceeds the civilians and illegal roleplayers.

 

Clearly if there was a choice to pick between PD and SD then the LSPD would be the obvious one considering we are roleplaying in the city and it wouldn't make sense to have a sheriff's department patrol LS, that's why.

I'm not even gonna get into all that because you already know that last sentence is bullshit, especially considering the fact that you've been in SD for years. As mentioned before, how exactly would merging the two make anything better at all? Trying to unite things into one is only going to remove diversity and make current active members of both factions who have been nothing but loyal to this server consider leaving altogether. If anything, now is the time legal factions need to drop shitty arguments like these that clearly offer no substance whatsoever and remain active while the illegal side of things picks up on its' own through updates etc. bringing back players.

[Yahooee]

Merging the two LEO factions together is a big no and imposibble if you look at it. Both factions have different structures and not to mention staffed executive and command teams. If you merge them together some people will either have to be removed from the faction or reducted to a lower rank&assignment. As far as the "lower the cop count" argument, I'd like to humbly state that in a server of 60-80 people, there are approximately 10-20 LEO's which is okay in my opinion. Considering that most of the LEO PB is SD, we have just about enough people to patrol the entirety of Los Santos and have sufficient assistance if 2 different situations were to be present at the same time. And even if what I just said was wrong, how are you planning on reducing the LEO PB? Just start removing people saying "Hey we don't need you."? People put time and effort into this faction. I know a few people that invest their time in this faction like it's their real life job, grinding so that an infrastructure can be built for others to enjoy the server and the faction. 

 

And a note on improving the RP quality; I'm pretty sure (For both LSSD and LSPD) the last thing you'd look into in regards of roleplay quality would be LEO RPers. As it stands, from what I've seen, the best roleplayers in this server are already in LEO factions. So RP has standarts have to be raised on the civilian/criminal side before if anything. I don't appreciate getting domed in the head with an AK because I wanted to issue a citation to a gang member.

Edited September 2, 2023 by Yahooee

[KingMaxel]

2 hours ago, Mikey said:

 

Funny of you to mention how SD has "always" been more active than PD. I can recall multiple times where PD has been way more active than SD so I'd suggest for you to open your eyes and realize that most people do not enjoy playing when the number of cops exceeds the civilians and illegal roleplayers.

 

Clearly if there was a choice to pick between PD and SD then the LSPD would be the obvious one considering we are roleplaying in the city and it wouldn't make sense to have a sheriff's department patrol LS, that's why.

I expected more from you, tbh

 

PD/SD is not the issue here, time is 

Edited September 2, 2023 by KingMaxel

[Duckling]

Removing either of the LEO factions won't result in a bigger playerbase. The issue is not LEO activity. The issue is how do we get civilians/illegals to start playing.

From the Sheriff's point of view. We received many applications last recruitment drive and 10+ people have been inducted. Many of them are extremely active, both ingame and SD's Discord Server. They are highly motivated and have been playing when there's barely any players on. Are they in the wrong for wanting to play? Why should they be hindered in doing so? This in no way this makes people not log in and play, especially not civilian roleplayers. So why should SD suffer from this?

Get non-LEO players motivated to play. That's where the problem is.

 

Merging or disbanding might be the dumbest idea right here.

SD has received many transfers from PD since the changes in PD's command. SD has also been generally more active than PD. The rest of the stuff I'm reading here is some big cope.