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Yes I would agree with all of this and think it's a core issue to tackle before we even get into trying to get new players (whether they come from other communities, other games, or are new to RP). Many folks are simply used to how LS-RP works that they forget that well, not everyone knows how it works from the get-go. Both a better 'customer journey' from landing on the website through to sign-up, followed by some in-game hand-holding at the start, would probably help with a bit of short term player retention for new folks. I get that there are a lot of other big issues to do with systems, scripts and so on, which may result in people eventually deciding it's not for them... but at least if they're given a good start, feel welcomed and so on, they're given the opportunity to decide for themselves further down the line without feeling overwhelmed.

Anyway, back to the topic. I’ve had friends that had some interest in roleplaying again, but after joining the server they weren’t exactly sure on what to do so they left. There needs to be some sort of hand holding when a new player joins, and I believe this should be a priority. Not only that, new players want to know what upcoming features are being worked on. I want to reiterate my idea from the first page regarding a public roadmap. A public roadmap would provide transparency to the community on what’s actively being worked on by devs, giving players something to look forward to. A google spreadsheet just isn’t enough.

OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION: The Hell Runners Motorcycle Club is an attempt to portray a realistic 1% MC, basing ourselves on existing real-life outlaw clubs from the United States. We welcome anybody, with experience in this field of roleplay or not, to join us! If you want to join our faction and have no idea on how to approach us, you can join the Discord server or let us know in a private message as we are more than happy to help you create a believable/realistic outlaw biker character. Discord Invite Link: https://discord.gg/g8b2fMAf3B

You just shit on his character, his roleplay, his faction and the entirety of the community. Awfully bold of you to think anyone's gonna' be very inviting towards you. That's like walking into someone's house, saying it looks like shit and your house looks better then expecting to be invited back for dinner. You're not providing any feedback on the server. Your entire post was directed towards a single faction out of spite. There was nothing constructive about what you said. It essentially boiled down to "car faction been mean to me!!!!" It's not the only faction on the server. Far from it. There's an entire community behind this server and your whole argument has been aimed at a single player, being Scandalouz. If you have something to say, say it. If not, save your beef for his DMs, bruh.

You're not exactly being an invitation to the server right now.

It is clear that this thread has derailed slightly but I'm loathed to shut it down because some of the things being discussed were genuinely useful. No more back and forth on personal issues between each other please, take it to DMs.

The reason GTAW has 900 players is a reason that is actively avoided on LSRP. Disgusting server, disgusting community. Freaks stick together and that's why it's populated. If those weirdos go anywhere else and do the shit they do on World, they're banned. World is the only place that accepts them and honestly, keep it that way. It filters out the dogshit from this community.

If RP is not fun, just go in peace. If RP is like a second job, your first job must not be worth your time. And don't act like everything you do gets treated as "unrealistic" if what you're doing is unrealistic. If you: /me describes Jiminny Cricket Shoot at cops because your enemy is in the vehicle DM a whole faction cause you hate a guy in it GTAW might be more suitable.

If you're talking about Rockford Plaza, isn't that super close to City Hall/Courthouse/PD Admin Building etc? Would be fine for legal Rpers but not for illegal.

I remember when I was invited to the Economy Team, raised concerns with suggestions, got kicked out because the ”Economy Team wasn't ready for the public” and that they'd invite me back when they had more to show. There was nothing, and I'm still waiting for my reinvite 6 weeks later. Furthermore, we can discuss and agree or disagree about the standards we want for the server but I'll reiterate what I said on another topic: A lot of people seem to think everyone's idea of roleplay has to match theirs. It doesn't. If you want to build and maintain a community, figure out what players want to roleplay and provide them the creative freedom to express themselves through the character they choose, and the scenarios they create. If it happens in real life, it's realistic. Has anyone asked gang roleplayers what they need for their roleplay? Motorcycle club players? Organized crime? Until you start doing that there's nothing to talk about. Get off the high horse and cut the ”stop complaining and get in-game” bullshit. That's the attitude that makes the average player go, ”fuck it. I'll join another server.” They don't care. They roleplay where they can roleplay what they want to roleplay. Period. Jack Welch said, “If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.” LSRP doesn't have a script-wise competitive advantage in V. What other competitive advantage can we create? Deliver more value by creating more roleplay opportunities for different groups of roleplayers. First, ask for feedback. Second, be transparent. Third, reflect and review.

This is why people left, goofballs like you who get a tiny taste of power on a virtual game and wanna delete posts they don’t agree lmfao with a 30 PB and a bunch of shit factions cause the good ones left, sit your ass down

Lol this response here is quite revealing. You seem to be consistently addressing a roleplay community every week with an essay about the same topic. It makes me wonder why you believe the server should revolve around your preferences exclusively. It appears you think your way of roleplaying is the only valid one. It's worth noting that gang "ROLEPLAYERS" have always played a significant role in the success of LSRP. While you've expressed concerns about issues unrelated to your own character, such as being an illegal racer or whatever your role may be, it's important to consider the purpose of these frequent posts. You're correct in pointing out the unrealistic shootouts and similar problems, but some of your complaints may seem unnecessary. This entire post might lack a clear argument. You were the one bringing up these concerns, and it seems like nobody else shared them. What specific changes are you hoping to achieve through this post?

Most people have never experienced that, so trying to appeal to nostalgia won't have much of an effect. In fact, it's one of the issues. The problems of the server started before it was even open. The powers that be seem to have thought that just bringing the brand back would've been enough to get former players to abandon other communities and go back home. Unfortunately this was the most wrong of assumptions. For one, after 2016 LSRP lost most of its original appeal, as it had turned into a jumbled mess of OOC connections, user infighting, complacency on behalf of the staff and staleness on behalf of the players and thus most émigrés had no reason to come back other than temporary curiosity. Additionally, the playerbase of other communities isn't composed exclusively of LSRP refugees, and those players who have never heard of it have little reason to check a server that offers a tenth of the features for no other significant gain. The economic system is good and the idea of having people buy things on credit is both very immersive and realistic in theory, but the scripts surrounding it have been designed backwards, in a way that actually discourages roleplaying around script-based jobs and fosters a mentality of grinding. The trash job works like a single-player mission that forces you to go from point A to point B and then repeat the same action 10 times instead of being a multiplayer system so that multiple players can roleplay a sanitation crew and, you know, roleplay while earning. The trucking is likewise not focused on actually roleplaying by having players share routes or some other similar framework, it instead encourages players to rush like a lemming to earn the most. There's no system that helps players to create roleplay hubs by simply existing while also earning a few bucks (i.e. the 24/7 job system that other communities have). In short the job scripts seem to have been teleported straight from 2010 and there's nothing, or very little, that's scripted to earn money while roleplaying with other people. But not all scripts are bad. Law enforcement scripts, for example, are quite advanced for a server that has launched not so long ago. Unfortunately not even half of the effort that was put into scripts for LEO factions was put into scripts that cater to illegal factions, with the end result being a noticeably unbalanced situation that definitely soured the illegal roleplayers. There's no reason to engage in the most common types of trafficking since narcotics have no effect and there's thus no market for them (since yeah, roleplay and all, but the people who use them just for roleplay can be counted on the fingers of one hand), and weapons appear to be a dime a dozen for criminals (and unbelievably expensive for legal roleplayers, which contributed to sour that share of the playerbase). Like it or not, the majority of RAGE MP players are used to having heaps of scripts to use as a crutch in their roleplay and thinking otherwise is just foolish from a business standpoint: you can do just fine without them, just don't expect to have enough of a playerbase to support the server. And even leaving the scripts aside and focusing on the storytelling, another major issue is that nothing was done to combat the staleness that affected SAMP's LSRP, it was doubled down on instead. This wasn't the fault of whoever is calling the shots only, though, as the West Coast has been used as backdrop for 15 years straight and there's very little that can be done differently, but even what could be done differently wasn't even taken into account. The lore and storytelling could've been the saving throws of LSRP, given that its main competitor seem to think that trying to create lore is a capital offense, but the LSRP mythos, despite having 15 years of SAMP history that could've been tapped into to create an immersive history, are reduced to three paragraphs that use the standard "we're just SoCal, but with some NorCal in an area of the map no one roleplays in". There's just nothing, in terms of factions or concepts, that can entice players because it isn't found anywhere else. The most obvious example is the legal faction panorama, that could've started with some fresh ideas that hadn't already been beaten to death in LSRP's previous instance and other communities but, no, you decided to go again with the tired LSPD/LSSD combo, which players can already experience in any server set in San Andreas, instead of ditching one of the two in favor of something new such as the SAHP or one of the half a dozen smaller police agencies that operate within LA city limits, and then you topped it all off by making both extremely bloated in an effort to be "realistic" instead of starting small and growing along with the playerbase. And then there's the complacency, which is perhaps the biggest issue of all. If you want the server to succeed you just cannot afford to be complacent or disappear for weeks on end only to pop up with a half-assed apology promising you'll do better in the future. The competition is many things, but complacent isn't one of them. You cannot possibly expect to pile up broken promise upon broken promise on top of a brand that is already greatly devalued since its heyday and get away with it. You need to set a vision of what you want to achieve roleplay-wise and stick to it, not jump from update to update and make it up as you go along. Either take it seriously and make justice to the banner you're under or call it a day and let people remember LSRP as the shining city on a hill that it once was. P.S. for the Panda's surveillance team: see, you're not that special, other management teams need guidance too.

Nakolki (наколки in russian) meaning tattoos Background and tradition During the 20th century in the Soviet Union, criminals maintained a culture of tattoos to indicate their criminal lifestyle, their career and ranking amongst other criminals. This was well-spread among the prisoners in Gulag camps and spread out to other prison entities. This is soon to be a tradition with almost a hundread years long history, the practice of criminal tattoos first started to appear in the 1930s, reaching the peak point in the 1950s after which it slowly started to decline, due to Nikita Khruschev's new policies. Krushcov tried to eradicate the criminals from the society, thus he introduced extended prison sentences for known criminals, those that identified themselves with the tattoos. In the same time, the traditional criminals that formed the Thieves in Law aka Vory (Воры́ в зако́не) as a response to the Khruschevs new policies started to enforce their criminal code, making sure that the ones that were unworthy of the tattoos got them forcefully removed. In the 1970s the tensions had risen to the boiling point, due to Vory enforcing their code and rules too much. At this time, prison authorities often threw Vory and legitimate criminals who enforced the code in the same cells, most of the time alone with multiple convicts from whom they removed the tattoos or had beaten up, or in some instances had raped. After the mid 1970s, tattoos started to come in fashion in the juvenile facilities and that flooded the ''Prison community'' with people who wore the ''unearned tattoos'', combined with the extreme punishments the Vory received for enforcing their code, Vory outlawed rape as a method of punishment and stopped enforcing the code of tattoo as strict as they had previously. After the perestroika in 1985 tattoos had spread outside of the prisons and made their way in the general fashion and reduced the value of tattoos being associated with criminal lifestyle. Modern days In the modern world, tattoos are rarely associated with criminal lifestyle, as they for most of the society are acceptable way of self-expression and in some instances just an attribute to enhance the looks. Altho, criminal tattoos are still a thing in most societies and post-soviet states are no exception. They are not enforced as harsh as they were, but surely wearing some of them are strong indications and the wearer knows the price of it. Most of the criminals chose not to get them, because they are like a sign that says ''I am a convicted felon and a criminal'' ultimately reducing their chances of living a casual civilian life. But for those who chose to get them, they often hold more of a personal meaning,a reminder, rather than displaying their criminal career. Of course, that goes both ways, some get them to display their ranking among the criminals in the prison community. Here I have compiled a rather long list with the most common and some more rare tattoos. S/O to Kiril_Ustinov for helping me find the websites. Virgin Mary - Wearer has been a thief/criminal from their early days or protection from some misfortune. (spoiler for a few variants I found) Casual stars Vory stars See spoiler for alternative variants and analogs I've found so far. Beetle is a symbol of a pickpocketer. There is also an analog for this, letters reading ''ZHUK'', that literally means a beetle in russian. That is also an acronym, reading ''Zhelayu Udachnykh Krazh '' meaning ''May your theft be a success'' Spoiler for more variants and pictures Churches, can be seen on hands, chest and back The number of dome towers (cupolas) indicates either number of prison terms or number of years of the sentence. Tiger - Just a symbol that that the wearer is hostile towards the law enforcement. Sailing ship, the wearer is a traveling thieft, sometimes known as brodyaga. Spider in a web, can be seen on any place of the body. In the web, it can indicate that the wearer is a drug addict or if moving upwards, a criminal who is active, if moving downwards, a criminal that seeks to exit the life of crime. Sunset, especially with birds represents freedom. The reading ''svoboda'' also means freedom, literally. A cat, often with a hat, symbolizes luck. It can also mean that the wearer is a thieft. It used to be that, the added bowtie represents that the thief snitched to get a reduced sentence, but in the modern days there is no such stigma around adding bowties, it's seen as a decoration mostly. Also an acronym KOT (meaning cat) stands for ''Korennoy Obitatel Turmi'' meaning Native Prison Inhabitant, a guy who lands in the jail all the time. English word would be a jailbird. Crucifixes, they are worn by the criminal ahtority figures. Career criminals with significant respect. Eyes on shoulders, means that the wearer oversees his surroundings and is always alert. Can also be linked to schitzophrenic origins, because eyes are often seen by schitzophrenic people causing them panic and making them check their surroundings all the time. Bells, ringing bells symbolize that the wearer will serve full sentence, ''From bell to bell''. Swastikas / Nazi related insignia are a sign of rebellion against Russian prison authority. Doesn’t literally mean that the wearer is a nazi sympathiser. SER - Svoboda Eto Ray - Freedom Is Paradise. Mix of women, money, cards or gambling related stuff and weapons / drugs just symbolizes the things that are killing ''us'' or the wearer. This is sometimes tailored for each person due to what's ruining his life. A bat, also a symbol of a thieft. A bull, basically the wearer is easely aggrevated and really aggresive. They are used as the hitsquad in prisons. Knife in shackles, wearer has commited a crime in prison. Roses, often with barbed wire just means ''Ruined childhood''. These are worn by criminals who started the career very early in life or had landed in juvenile facility. Knife in the neck, the wearer is skillfull with melees and has either killed somebody with a sharp object or has caused severe harm with the object. The joker, wearer likes to gamble. Pirate, wearer is a robber. Sight, the wearer says that if you shoot, you better kill him, because he won't miss when he retaliates. Scorpion, many meanings LHVS - Legavim Huy Voram Soboda - To trashcops the dick, to thieves freedom. Another meaning of LHVS it's just joke - Lublu Halvu Varenie Sahar - I like halva, marmalade, sugar. --+# Searched, searched, caught, condemned. Ring tattoos, these are tattooed on fingers like rings. For the meanings, check the quote under this. Used literature and websites in the spoiler

@SCANDALOUZwhat the hell do y'all want, and what the hell is your problem? What the hell have you not gotten? Hi, as a player who left (I got linked this thread) I think I'm the perfect person for asking these questions to. I joined the server with the goal of developing a character. I had limited time and preferred to spend my time RPing a civilian and hanging out with people. Some of you might know me as Isabella DelViento. A character who was often around and despite her "angry" attitude still quite approachable and entertaining. Scandalouz personally invited me to join the server and his faction, and after being reluctant at first due to limited time IRL, I decided to give it a try. Upon creation of my character I had issues to edit changes. The character creation wasn't the best, neither was it bad. I just had a rough time editing my character's appearance. But with the help of a patient and friendly tester and the reintroduction of the character customization it all got solved. Weeks went by and whenever I had time I tried to fill the Pit Stop as well as other clubs and bars in the server. I met many people and truly had a great experience. I developed a character who actually had friends and things to do IC. While spotting random people in bars, I sometimes try to include them in the ongoing RP. I often see groups having fun in bars while someone sits alone but doesn't really RP anything. I feel like including those players in the ongoing RP is the best way to teach them to play and have them stick around the server longer. Time went on, the Pit Stop discord got bigger. What went from a "nice club of car enthousiasts who don't want to do cringy racing and provoking of police" grew into a full blown criminal organisation. There was cooperation with other illegal factions. A gun and drug scheme. Suddenly I was told to sign a CK clause. I was confused why, since my character is merely a visitor of your bar. She did not have anything to do with any of the illegal stuff going on. After being tagged in the thread 3 or 4 times, I decided to just check it as read. My assumption about the faction and you people was that you'd have some OOC understanding for eachother. I'm here to play a game in a friendly environment and it seemed to be that way. Time went on, 5 hours later my character was dead. You even agreed with me that my character didn't have any malicious intent. The whole situation was MGd. You even reported all of this on the forums. Having a reasonable conversation with you was impossible. Your statement was: "I acted the way my character would IC." You roleplay a poor character, the whole point is that it's meant to be some funny troll character who is some sociopathic murderer. I don't know what the server rules are here, but this is very poor reasoning. You indirectly claim that you CK my character because your character has a mental problem. To me that is deathmatching. This is why I wondered if there was any rule against RPing serial killers and the like of them. I refused to take a CK. I rather had the situation voided, since everything was based on MG. You got so angry OOC and banned me from the faction and immediately tried to portray me as a bad person in the discord. To me it felt ironic that you set up the CK clause, with yourself and Harry as the person to speak to. Yet both of you were involved in the situation. You're the judge and the jury. What was the result of this? You PK'd me from the faction and banned me from everything related to oversteer. This is basically the whole server? You knew this and this is the "power" you get off to. I thought you were a genuine person who wanted to do the best for the server, but it turns out all you want is power. The condescending way you talk to people in this thread explains it all. The last few weeks before I quit LSRP, I was online daily. So you're missing one player per day just because of that. I never had issues with anything else in the game, just you. @Tungsten Yes, your argument "it's just a game" is a very valid and important point. We are here to have fun. I had fun developing a character and that fun was taken from me for absolutely no reason. I think as a faction leader, especially somebody who writes forum topics like these, some OOC responsibility, kindness and empathy goes a long way. It is just a game, but one I enjoyed playing the way I did. I lost my character and all the development that went into her over a reason that was poor, even if the massive MG wasn't involved. To sum it up: "what the hell do y'all want, and what the hell is your problem? What the hell have you not gotten?" what the hell do y'all want: To develop a character, socialize in game. and what the hell is your problem? My character was DMd and "banned" from the faction I had most of my RP with What the hell have you not gotten?: Respect from the faction leader, you.

My business (The Pit Stop) has been mentioned a /lot/ in this thread, and I feel like there's some common misconceptions about it that I have to address: 1) There's only rich characters and expensive cars there. - That's untrue at all. We have all kinds of customers and employees and they have all kinds of vehicles. We have like 6 /good/ sports cars,but like 5 of them are sub-100K. It's not like we're pulling up with Cheetahs, Turismos and Infernuses. 2) The Pit Stop is a very exclusive venue. - That's not true at all. We're the most active /public/ business in the server. That alone negates any potential exclusivity as well. Obviously, there are people who are treated differently, but that's not to the detriment of public availability at all. I have rushed to create and open the place early into the server's life, precisely in order to give the server a hot-spot where people can meet up. I am as a matter of fact currently in talks with the company team about policies set in place that could potentially enable us to be even more active/available to the public which we are currently - for hot spot sakes. 3) The Pit Stop isn't friendly to newcomers / beginners. - This is also untrue, because we employ and have employed several people that can be classified as the above. I have personally went out of my way to micro and macro manage them, written textwalls upon textwalls of guides and handbooks in order to help them out get used both to the script and the server as a whole. I/we have always been more than open to people, including new and learning ones, to come join the fray, especially when these people are truly willing to learn. ** The only people that we have been unfriendly towards both IC and OOC is excuses of "characters" that have visited the place for /no other reason/, but to instigate conflict so that they can have their daily dose of action/brawling/shooting. Clearly this will not be welcome from an IC perspective, and it's questionable at best from an OOC perspective when we take things like into realism and value for one's life into consideration. To add on to the above, some of the comments here borderline imply that, while we need a hot-spot, the Pit Stop is more like the mall, and we need a hot-spot that's more like Idlestacks, and when we look at Idlestacks, that's exactly it. Excuses of "characters" visiting and instigating conflict, just so they can have their daily dose of action/brawling/shooting. To that I say - if this is the goal/purpose/desire - then we're better off without it. This is a role playing server, not a (T)DM RPG. New players, solo players, civilian players and etc/however you want to call them - are absolutely necessary in the server. It's also absolutely necessary for us as a community and for the administration to figure out ways to cater to them and make their welcoming experience a warm one. This should definitely be a goal that I can whole heartedly get behind and even personally go out of my way to help with whatever I can. If the goal is to just "Idlestacks V2" however and all the stupid shit that comes with it - nah, we're better off without it.

Sure. You just explained that why we are losing players. I wish you nothing but best luck.