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Was asked to put my 2 cents in, so here goes. If you know me, you’ll know that my dedication to LSRP since relaunch (and for the last 14 years really) has been pretty strong. This changed in August this year. I was consistently doing the most in game reports, the most refund requests, the most insert menial task here, etcetera, all while leading a sub team and doing general admin shit on the side. My demotivation and burnout slowly started to set in because of a few things, I’m not going to name any names but if you know, you know. I don’t want this to be a bashing post, just a post from the heart. Bear in mind I’ve not touched LSRP really since August at this point. I’m going to say a majority of the admin team done absolutely fuck all to support others who actually cared about the community, whether this be in game reports or whatever. There was lead admins in game who would make a mockery of player reports in /a instead of actually dealing with them whilst I’m trying to deal with 2 reports and a refund at the same time, just to try and restore some faith in the team that were not lazy bastards and reports do get handled. My report statistics confirm this. I slowly got sick of this. Actually no, I quickly got sick of it. The knock on effect there is that why should I be bursting my balls while these guys sit in the same or higher positions than me whilst not giving a singular fuck, or abusing their positions to win RP situations and break rules and hack (I’m looking at you Xanakin, happy to name him as this is historic at this point) I then decided ok I’ll try help out in other ways. I joined the dev team and began writing and modifying scripts, ONLY based off of player suggestions. In my mind, doing what the players WANT was the right thing to do (within reason). The first “big feature” I worked on was company system enhancements, primarily company chat. I had most of the scripting done to then be let down like a Japanese pilot in the 40’s. I was simply told “nah FTC said no” this booked my piss and I argued and argued for it until they were basically told it’s happening whether you like it or not. This of course put a sour taste in my mouth too. The final straw for me which started my extensive absence was a result of a staff report, made against me by a lead admin at the time who didn’t like me because I publicly shamed him for his laziness every chance I could get. I got on one night after a few drinks and dealt with an admin sit (because would you look at that, the reporter didn’t bother to accept the report). Resolved the report pretty simply, all was good. The player who was reported was logging off and messing around so I chugged his ass into the dirt, revived him, refunded his weapon and that was that. No harm done, just a bit of fun! I find out the next day that I was going to be removed from the staff team for this ONE incident, despite me being the most active contributor (statistically) to the community at the time. This really set me off and I don’t think I’ve logged in to this day. I’ve really been trying to regain my spark for it but whenever I open up the SAMP client I take a totally legally acquired Xanax because I just can’t face it right now. The players for the most part are cool as fuck and you know who you are, but some of you are absolutely insufferable and I think you need a reality check. as those who have resigned have said, nothing is ever good enough. We could script the cure for cancer and someone would complain “but what about cerebral palsy?!” just my two cents, or dollars. Rambled on a bit here but here’s where I’m at right now. This isn’t a resignation, but just an explanation for my absence. I do love this place, but shit has to change and I’m not just talking about staff/management. I really do want this place to succeed man. Get a grip, everyone.

SAN ANDREAS PAUL GRUMO, ALLEGED BOSS OF LOS SANTOS CRIME FAMILY, DIES AT 63 Booking photo of Paul Grumo following his arrest in 2021. (Los Santos Police Department) BY HAROLD DALEY Dec. 10 Updated 9:01AM PT LOS SANTOS — Paul Grumo, the alleged boss of the Los Santos crime family, was found dead in his Palomino Creek home Sunday morning. The 63-year-old died suddenly in his sleep, and authorities stated it is too early to comment on whether or not foul play factored into the death. Born and raised in Tampa, Grumo is believed to have got his start in organized crime working for the Valenti crime family’s long-time Florida-based caporegime Frank D’Armi as a bookmaker in the late 1980s. Grumo moved to Los Santos in 2013 when the Valenti family was in a state of turmoil with much of its upper echelon behind bars or on trial and deadly power struggles decimating the family further. Grumo has been linked to notorious Mafia bigwigs from Santino “The Butcher” Valenti’s inner circle such as the now-imprisoned Samuel “The Beak” Beccarini and Donald Rigazzi, who currently resides in Tampa. Grumo was released from prison in 2009 after serving a 5 year sentence for aggravated assault, but otherwise managed to stay under the radar of law-enforcement and out of the public eye for much of his criminal career, until rising to the top of the Valenti crime family in recent years. Grumo faced a lengthy trial before eventually being acquitted of money laundering charges last year. In stark contrast to Sonny Valenti—who through his bloody rise and high-profile trials became a celebrity and embraced a life of luxury, often seen wearing expensive suits, driving flashy sports cars, and lived in a Richman Hills mansion—Grumo largely managed to avoid headlines and exhibited a more humble lifestyle. Mafia pundits point to Grumo as being a key figure in the rebuilding of the Valenti crime family, ushering in an era of stability for an organization that had been in constant turmoil since the 2011 conviction of its original boss Sonny Valenti. The Valenti family, once thought to be completely defunct, began making significant inroads and a resurgence in the Los Santos underworld in 2018 and beyond, which came to the surface with their bloody feud with the renegade Bellantonio crime family in 2019 and 2020. Since then, there has been no violence linked to the Valenti family. Authorities believe that the rival organizations negotiated a peace treaty and cut all business ties, through the help of mediation from Bonanno family bigwig Joseph “The Barber” Uttaro. The impact Grumo’s death may have on the landscape of the Valenti family and Los Santos underworld remains to be seen. Some believe that Sonny Valenti still holds the top seat in the family from behind bars, but his level of influence in the family’s modern state of affairs is largely unknown. The Butcher’s earliest possible release date is 2036.

I'm absolutely gutted to see these rocks of the community leave, and despite the issues spoken about, I'm still having a blast in game. I arrived here over 15 years ago so I've seen it all, I know what works and what doesn't, but that aside I found it to be one of the better era's in my experience with all this new stuff we have now it's amazing. The things I miss most as a player are now the things I'm trying to implement I.E wicked events and cool new updates, I can't script but I'm working hard on modding new furniture, /hold items and other stuff and will happily continue to do so to make peoples environments that little more special, not to mention all the other content creators trying to for fill that same vision. It's a roleplay server at the end of the day, we had a great server and a huge population without much to begin with, just a great community of people that want to play the game, things have moved on sure but you'll always have people here trying to make the community a fun place. And although yes I enjoy the nostalgia train too, a lot of players I've helped through /re have been very new players, if not a couple of months to a couple of days old so it says to me there are new players still coming through. We're all the reason we're all here.

LS-RP has always had a communication issue, and I think that's where its main problems come from. There's a lot of different aspects that all connect together to what determines a good or bad server but communication is key. We had a good handful of community events in the discord, but that's sizzled out? Why? We get told to vote on the UCP for new features, but are left in the dark about these, for example the big phone update, it's been posted since May? and we've heard nothing since, and it's been six months which is a lot of time to not hear something. Economy is a big topic - The amount of complaining I witnessed during the first few of the relaunch about money etc was crazy. People were acting like we was all given a big wad of cash back in the day. People expected a reinforced backbone. I want this, I want that. I personally never complained about not having assets. I played and enjoyed and had fun, where now people feel like they're entitled to assets, to then is abused so what does it matter anyway.. Pre LS-RP closure had some brutal leads who had little to no care and I think that has had a ripple effect on LS-RP v2, people jump in assuming things have changed for the better, being given false hope, for it all to unveil just a couple months down the line. The current LS-RP has some good heads, probably the best we've had since 2016 so don't take this as a dig or slight slander. I just think people want that old LS-RP feeling and it's not delivering, times have changed mentally for everyone and we're just chasing nostalgia. What we also got to remember is that LS-RP was of its time, although SAMP had been around for awhile, it was a dominant platform, GTAV wasn't even on PC and by then it was already played for a year+ prior to PC release, and to be honest the servers under LS-RP had nothing to offer like this one did, an exclusive whitelist to filter a bunch of factors, its 1:1 script, how wholesome and connected the community was. I think the generation (outside of LS-RP) has changed and it's having a mental affect on people to where people think they're better than each other and it's sad to see it having a big impression on this community. But aside from the community, SAMP as a whole isn't what it use to be. I don't ever remember there being so many variations of hacks, you had the usual nametaggers, sometimes aimbotters, but never the blatant and obvious use of aimbot, walk speed hacks and just general SAMP physics abuse. Mostly every video I've seen is the player shooting like there real life is at stake, C shoot C, C, C, C... it gets boring and tiring. You can fill out a report but I think people are well beyond that stage now, we're getting older and people like me just get on with it and don't bother to report, it's time consuming and I really couldn't gaf about it. People don't have time like they use to. The older generation of LS-RP are well in their higher 20s to 30s now and stuff like this will always be on the side. People cannot afford to play on top of that, some countries are going through big financial issues. It's just a generational change and the new generation are spoon fed whatever they want, and if they don't, they leave. It's pretty broad as that, nothing to counter it, just look at it as cutting dead wood.

IFT/IFC Issue aside, the community's unending negativity also took its toll. People stopped roleplaying for fun and simply started to RP to win as evident by the same people reporting one another over scenes that shouldn't even happen in the first place. We should go back to our roots and enjoy simple passive RP and relax a little. Instead of these never ending shootouts that are obviously aren't even fun for their participants since they always end up in a /b fiesta and a report.

RIP Paul Grumo - The boss that everyone wishes they were

I don't agree with this. Management almost always takes too long to give up some control to other players or onboard new members on the team. For example, if I express a desire to join a certain staff team, it will most likely take a few weeks before that process is concluded. Motivation comes and goes in waves. By the time when you're given a position where you can influence stuff, that motivation is probably at the downwards trend of the wave. Had the process of onboarding someone not taken weeks, but rather 1-2 days, that motivation would've still been fresh and the person would keep their activity. Its an issue that has been around for a long time, which is why you see it happen for a majority of the cases. The average age of an LSRP player is much much older than what it used to be. We've got commitments and not a lot of time in the day to spend on LSRP. You simply cannot afford to follow the same laborious processes from before and expect the community to not get frustrated and eventually leave. For example, seeing the state of businesses on the server and how inactive they were, I expressed a desire to furnish some businesses for the server for free, no strings attached, so that they can be put on auctions or for leasing. No response apart from the generic "We'll look into it" response for a month. I don't understand what cons there can even possibly be for the management to still be "looking into" it. Eventually I decided to say fuck it, bought myself a business, bought a donator, furnished it in a couple of days and offered to give it away for free to the leasing team for them to utilize but again, received a generic "We'll look into it" response. I'm offering free stuff as a token of appreciation for the server, but every time, it seems like I'm not welcomed. Does this give me a sense of belonging in the community? No, not really. Does this make me feel like I'm filing paperwork for the government or filing taxes, rather than trying to make some positive changes in a niche roleplaying community from 2007? Yes it does.

Money Movements/Trapping

I will be back on a new character in the future when my schedule permits. Needless to say, the show goes on. New topic for all usergroup members to read: https://community.ls-rp.com/forums/topic/14600-leaves-of-absence/page/2/?tab=comments#comment-212203

nice

Providing my two cents, as I think everyone should be to some degree. Naturally any gaming server, and especially one within the roleplay space is always going to have its ups and downs with playerbase. Whether it be real life commitments, other games coming out even other servers, it will always be a rollercoaster. Even back when I first started to really understand roleplay and got invested in around 2014-2015, the reason the server maintained such a higher playerbase during this time was due to a constant flow of new players coming in and trying out the server, gaming was a completely different landscape back then and the age of moving from one game to another, every game having commitments attached to it (such as battlepasses, timed FOMO events etc) was not a thing, or at least to a much lesser extent, combine this with the fact that everyone was younger back then, we were largely a bunch of teenagers and 20-somethings messing around in a roleplay server with all the free time in the world, now we are older and have real life commitments that get in the way of playing into the early hours of the morning. Gaming itself has developed into what I would describe as a 'fast-food culture', people play a game for a couple weeks, drop it when their friends get on a new game then rinse and repeat, not only that but it has vastly affected attention spans and people opt for more fast-paced experiences than roleplay. This has bled into communities across several games and not just within SA:MP or RAGE. What I'm getting at is that the issue with the playerbase is not because of management, developers, staff, features of the server or any one person in particular, its because gaming as a hobby in general has vastly changed since LS-RP peaked all those years ago. People opt for a play-to-win experience, they look for constant shoot outs, robberies, car chases, and treat roleplay servers as GTA Online lobbies with a few extra steps instead of the more traditional roleplay we had 10 years ago. No matter how many cool features, no matter how alive the world feels. If the server was constantly begging for attention and dropping seasonal content left-right and center whilst also having riveting gameplay where you spawn in with a gun and get into a gunfight minutes after joining the server then the playerbase would flourish undoubtedly but it would have the opposite effect overall on the quality of the server. Its a hard balance to find and there have been numerous steps since the relaunch of SA-MP to incentivize a more fast paced game but its simply not enough for a 20 year old game to hold the attention of modern gamers. It will never be good enough... Although I can understand that is a very melodramatic take on things, with the current landscape of gaming that is the case. Its on every single one of us to uphold the community and to get to the root of the problems before people simply up and leave onto different games. I can completely understand why several pillars of our development have left the team and I don't fault them for it, as someone who greatly appreciated and still appreciates everything they have done for the server, it hurts but I can also completely understand it from their point of view and it similarly the reason I took a lengthy hiatus from the server in January, it doesn't feel nice to work on something for hours on end and have it either go unnoticed or unappreciated. With all that negativity out of the way, I am still confident in Helius, danut and Conor to deliver a fantastic relaunch for LS-RP:V and I urge anyone who can be a helping hand to reach out to them, your help will go a long way and they will make sure of it. Yap over.

fr, you have all the /cmds that you need to create a fun environment, they started to add some fun that we needed and didn't need to enjoy the gameplay. Not every day will be filled with rp activities but thats just how it is somedays...

Back in the day all i needed was /me and /do to start some shit and have fun, it's really a mentality issue, hard to swallow pill but it's the truth.

I'm not getting involved with the drama posted here before me. My reply is to the topic's original title: "Can we bring back the old playerbase count?". Do you remember when first joined LS-RP, reader? It was exciting being thrown into a world with loads of people living their own virtual lives, you were meeting new people, joining new groups, you were having fun and learning more about the community. Everything was new and you were impressed by the big factions and businesses. We still get a lot of new players here, and this is still the experience that they have when they join the server for the first time. I'm in the unique position to be running such a big company in game, I speak to a lot of new players, probably more than almost anybody in this community, my company receives about 3-5 applications a day, a majority of them being from new players. We give them a chance to learn how to rp and get to know them. I often ask these new players how they found out about LS-RP, what they like, what they don't like, and how they feel about things overall. I hear positive feedback from nearly 100% of the new players I speak to. Unfortunately when asking old players the same questions you will receive negative feedback from most people. The new car smell has worn off. My point in saying this is because one of my main goals as a new lead admin is to create a strategy to bring in new players and improve the player count. New players that end up sticking around are generally some of the nicest and most motivated people that I get to talk to. With the way things are setup right now, LS-RP is not user friendly for new people, we don't have an up to date tutorial, the news paper is gone, it's complicated for new people to join factions or jobs, the /help system is outdated, our website does not have a clear home page, etc etc. These are all things that will be worked on with urgency after the 14.0.0 update, which is coming very soon. When asking new players how they found LS-RP, an overwhelming majority of them say that they found us via YouTube. With this information in hand, I have recently been in discussions with a couple of prominent content creators in our area of roleplay, such as Userone, in order to gain feedback on how we can work with them to make the content-creation experience better for those looking to do so in LS-RP. In the coming days we will be launching a content creator program where people can earn credits, additional support, and recognition for their videos from the staff team. Making LS-RP user friendly to new people and creating a better platform for content creators, hopefully we can bring in new players and retain them, upping the overall player count. We also have plans to have our server back on the server browser. You can also help with upping the player count by being more open to new players, you were a new player once and people probably helped you, you might even still remember those great people from back when you first joined. A lot of people are extremely dismissive to new players.

You cannot allow yourself to turn a blind eye to that fact about everything coming to a close, this is understandably very much on its last legs. Could always try to pick up general quality control regarding factions, and faction thread submissions for starters (raise enforced standards), and pick up new admins who have that driven vision. Tidy clean places are always preferable. But what do I really know, I never played LSRP until RCRP & GTAC shutdown.

There’s no better way to put it than how Michael said: it's a mentality issue more than anything else, and it's becoming increasingly clear over time. From my experience in-game, both as an admin and as a member of an illegal faction, it's truly draining to witness the attitudes of both players and some staff members. The same individuals shouting “fix LS-RP” or jumping on the “it’s dying” trend are often the ones contributing to its downfall by ruining players’ experiences. They bend the rules to get some free DM, use whatever undetectable hacks they can get to gain an unfair advantage, and generally undermine the community. Roleplay has always been a game mode where players are expected to hop in and create their own enjoyment. Features from the dev team are meant to enhance the experience, not serve as a prerequisite for engaging in the game. Waiting for the dev team to deliver some groundbreaking update before deciding to log in defeats the purpose of the server entirely. LS-RP thrives on the community’s contributions from factions to videos, to just people playing the server in general. Management understands this well, and currently, I believe we’re at a peak of transparency and opportunities for community members to be heard and appreciated. This is an older comment from the thread, but it's still an ongoing issue. With SA-MP reopening, the staff team adopted a lenient “education over punishment” approach to try and improve relations with players. However, it felt like this leniency was exploited and negatively impacted the player experience. The reporting players often felt wronged, believing that admins failed to take proper action, while rulebreakers developed a “getting away with it” mentality, further pushing boundaries. An issue is always going to be where we draw the line, when do we start handing out permanent bans or increasingly long ajails in hopes that it prevents this type of behavior from pushing the genuine members of the community who are here to roleplay away. As the community has grown in age, people no longer fear "stepping out of line", they have other responsibilities to worry about and simply don't care if their position is terminated or they're punished on the server etc, and that’s a significant problem we need to somehow resolve. Roleplaying is a game mode where one person’s misstep can ruin the experience for many others, often triggering a domino effect. Piecing everything together is challenging because, in my experience, some of the most active community members are also the ones most intent on consistently breaking rules. They often seem surprised when action is taken against them. I completely agree with Michael’s point about entitlement. This issue spans all areas of the server, from legal roleplayers to staff members and illegal roleplayers alike. It seems like no one is willing to take a loss anymore. I’ve seen people repeatedly log in to kill each other upon respawn, only to report each other and then complain when both are punished. It genuinely makes no sense to me. I appreciate that there are often issues within the staff team, people feel like they're not being heard or their contributions are under appreciated. However, a lot of the issues that we face on the server are impossible for staff to fix alone, as I highlighted earlier, LS-RP is and always will be here because of the community, and often it's made out to seem like staff are working against the community and vice versa, which shouldn't be the case at all.

Snowy day - (Click here as you read trough the image)

The Barons Motorcycle Club focuses on creating a realistic motorcycle club ecosystem, one that can vividly depict the outlaw lifestyle. We encourage new-comers to join us through one of the many available avenues of interaction. We want to develop a faction that acts as an umbrella for different characters and concepts. The more diverse the characters are, the better. We want to create a community rather than a singular faction. Once you are offered a prospective membership IG and/or post screenshots on this thread, you are therefore agreeing to granting your CK permissions to the leadership of the faction. Any questions regarding the faction can be directed to @cheekyor @Klag

Keep forwarding !!

Very cool, following up! @mongols Mc

You asked Raymond/ @tracksuithitman for proof about staff and claimed he never sent you anything. Well, I’ll post some proof here publicly for you, with courtesy. https://streamable.com/1se5gd https://streamable.com/45i5of https://streamable.com/fq32ry - Can't see his name here but you got the other videos. Also if y'all remove this comment then you prove the point that the community got censorship issues along with the rest of the issues it has. @Mmartin @Michael