Leaderboard

The truth is, the way RAGE was introduced as the future and vision for LSRP and its community is absolutely ridiculous. At first, I didn’t pay it much attention, but over the past six or so months, I’ve come to realise that half the staff team aren’t here to support the only platform we currently have up and running. Most are hogging their roles while waiting for RAGE. That hasn’t only created a divide within the team but has also made things very discouraging for the community. Staff members are failing to realise that SA:MP still has potential, still will have potential, and just needs the right people who share the same passion to keep it running. What’s the point of having testers on our current platform when they’re not interested in it? I really tried to make sense of it but couldn’t. Now that this division exists within the staff, I think it’s time for management to make it official. If staff members aren’t interested in SA:MP, split them. Have those who share a passion for this platform perform and actually partake in vital roles for it. There’s no reason for the head of any team to hold their role when they have no interest in SA:MP. It’s time for everybody to pull their weight, from staff to community. I’ve read a couple of decent suggestions made by Voronov, and I stand by them. It would be great to create an economy other than guns and drugs for illegal factions. This is why I always hoped for an inventory system, like I mentioned in the previous thread. There are endless possibilities once items are actually introduced to the server. Like Martin Busato also mentioned, any money made from SA:MP should have been pumped back into it. I do understand that there aren’t many developers who share the same passion some of us do when it comes to SA:MP, but at the same time, we’re not actively recruiting for one. Management should be looking to recruit developers for SA:MP, especially those who show interest. The more, the merrier. Furthermore, there should be a capable person managing those developers, and a project or two should be pushed out for SA:MP every couple of months. If, however, we do not find any, the money made from donations should be used to help bolster this platform. Whether it’s for development or marketing, anything at this point would mean a lot. I’d really like to go into more detail, but I honestly fear that this thread will derail, eventually get locked, and that my posts will get removed. I’ll wait and see how this one goes before I take the time to write anything else.

For those who missed it: there was a general discussion topic called "Will LSRP survive?" that went viral yesterday which was flooded with constructive criticism and solutions to improve LSRP. The thread was locked in response to a small minority of people doxxing, leaking staff information and derailing, and someone within the staff team crashed out and merged all of the faction threads into Bellantonio's. This prompted staff to rollback the forums to recover the faction forum, which resulted in the deletion of this topic. I've been told others have tried reposting it only for it to be deleted again but I'll give it another go, although I want to frame the discussion slightly differently to push for a more positive, solution-based discussion. Censorship certainly isn't the answer here and will only serve to shatter any trust left in staff and push the few players left out the door. Please keep this thread up if you know what's best for the server. If people are derailing or breaking rules, deal with those individuals accordingly but the rest of us who wish to see LSRP revived should be allowed to say our piece. Roughly a year ago I posted the first iteration of this topic and it was received quite well by everyone. I was very pleased with the staff response and moderation of the topic, but seeing what happened with the topic yesterday was a reversion to the kind of censorship LSRP had been known for years ago and was deeply disappointing. Linked below is the topic I posted last year which goes into detail about my vision for LSRP and is ripe full of great ideas put forth by the community: A VISION FOR THE FUTURE - Page 15 - General Discussions Archive - Los Santos Roleplay Today, however, my post (initially written as a response to the topic that was deleted yesterday) will focus on what I believe to be the crux of the issue. Given my faction has been staring down the barrel of description threats recently, I don't take posting this lightly but I want LSRP to succeed and believe it needs to be said. I want to start off by acknowledging and thanking the staff members who have helped make LSRP be a great place to roleplay over the years. As a member of this community since 2009, former member of Faction Management, an official faction leader from 2018-2024 and having still represented Valenti in many of our correspondences with Illegal Faction Council beyond that, I’d be remiss not to highlight the vast improvements seen in the Illegal Faction Team in particular compared to past eras where it was marred with incompetence, toxicity, and corruption. Factions today have access to more perks than ever before, official faction selections have been handled sensibly for the most part, and the IFT has generally been more supportive and transparent than ever before. Despite recent disagreements with IFC's handling of my faction, I greatly appreciated the honesty, accountability, insight and consideration shown by @Aloosh, @Rye and @unlawfulact in their responses yesterday and this gave me a renewed sense of confidence that the IFT is still in good hands. I'd also like to thank @badhbh and @Dos Santos for their immense dedication to this server and being a pleasure to deal with during my time as an official faction leader last year. When we brought Valenti back, I urged our people to set the bar low in terms of expectations for LSRP. Not because I didn’t believe in the potential for a major comeback on SAMP, but because the staff, more specifically, the management, had let this community down time and time again, and the return of the SAMP server seemed more like a last-ditch marketing gimmick for LSRPV than anything else. I wanted our people to enjoy this last ride as much as we can without dwelling on the failures of the staff team. Fortunately, despite the recent decline, this SAMP run overall has exceeded my expectations and much of that is thanks to the staff putting forth more of an effort to satisfy the community’s wishes, at least initially. Beyond that, the success affirmed that there is still an appetite and market for SAMP. Unfortunately, that market is shrinking by the day and will vanish if things don’t improve in quick order. I’ve only recently returned to playing after a year-long hiatus so I’m admittedly writing this from a limited perspective, but I’ve kept in the loop and been around long enough to pinpoint what I believe to be the main reason LSRP is on a steep decline: inactivity, complacency and a lack of leadership at the management level. No, this is not the only problem. Yes, I do agree with much of what was said in the discussion yesterday, but many of those problems are symptoms of this primary issue. When @Mmartin and Surreal took over from Damian, I showed my support publicly and still believe it was a much-needed change at the time. Some positive changes were made over the years and when Mmartin was actively contributing, developing and engaging with the community earlier in this run, the community was undoubtedly better for it; I am grateful for his contributions over his many years here. However, being a good leader isn’t just about knowing when to step up but also knowing when to step down when it’s clear you are no longer the person for the job. That time came long ago and it’s time to act on it. Every leader has a shelf life and there's no shame in that but it's abundantly clear a major change is needed at the very top to restore any level of morale and confidence in staff by the community. By no means is this an attack on Mmartin; in fact, my interactions with him both IC and OOC (the times he responded) were always good, but an active and engaged leader is essential for any hope of a revival for LSRP. The community should vote on a new manager and that’s who Mmartin should pass the reins to; doing so would rejuvenate the community, potentially salvage the staff’s reputation, and hopefully bring about a vision on the best path forward. I personally don’t have much faith in LSRPV but if that’s what Mmartin and others want to focus on, fine, but there needs to be a dedicated manager and team for each server, not one divided and dysfunctional team covering both. I don’t mind managers being paid for their efforts and wish LSRP was successful enough financially to pay all of their staff because I am extremely grateful for their contributions, but donations to the SAMP server should go towards the SAMP server and LSRPV donations should go towards LSRPV. Once either project is sustainable and successful enough, only then should managers and/or staff get paid. With foresight and an actual vision, there will be more to go around in the long run, but if the status quo persists, donations will dwindle away to nothing. The LSRP brand exists on SAMP, not on GTAV, and it’s glaringly apparent the SAMP server needs to be more of a priority going forward. LSRP SAMP failing is a marketing disaster for LSRPV. Plenty of good ideas have been presented and I have no doubt that people within the staff team have pushed for many of the improvements we are asking for, but ultimately it starts at the top. Management needs to seek player feedback more via discussions like this, feedback surveys, allowing players to vote on important decisions, etc., then utilize those findings, set out a vision and get everyone pulling on the same rope. The disconnect between staff and players needs to be eradicated and instead we need to be one cohesive team. I know this sounds like a pipedream, but I believe the right leadership can make it happen, at least to some extent. TL;DR: Management needs to step it up for the community, put forth a comprehensive vision that we can all work towards, or step aside for someone who will. LSRP's future depends on it. What's your vision for the future? If you bring forward a problem, do so respectfully and also bring forth a solution. Please keep it clean and let's have a productive discussion that can hopefully help shape a positive future for LSRP.

Well said. The staff team has been harbouring a bunch of people with that same silly mentality. Whenever multiple staff members voiced their concerns about SA-MP and its current state in staff chat, they’d get gangbanged by the same group of friends over and over again. Nothing constructive, just constantly shitting on you. Let me give you an example (THIS IS FROM MAIN CHAT, DON’T BAN ME). How can you expect a staff member, or those who are here for SA-MP, to stay for the long run when, first, you’ve been neglecting the community, second, you go MIA and show no support, and third, you have people on the team who are constantly bashing the platform. These same people who have been bashing the platform that some of us still love have gone untouched. They haven’t been addressed, and it’s been ongoing for months now. It’s a divide that management has supported because they themselves are part of the neglect we’re experiencing. Stop saying SA:MP is dead when you’re not even trying to fix it. Be part of the solution, or shut your mouth and wait for your so called GTA V server to show up. Edit: Also, can someone tell us why Kev’s reply was removed?

Thank you @Martin_Busato for always staying pure and promoting the best roleplay with yours and your faction's efforts. With respect for you guys I won't troll or derail this thread, I'm only going to speak the truth and if it gets removed again then that's the only answer you need about what intentions management has for LSRP. And respect to @jack for being willing to hear us out. I was going to be a lot more brash with this post until I read you were formulating a response so I will hold off with some things until we see it. I do want to address some critical concerns I have with things I've seen since being staff again and I hope instead of hiding this you will address it in your reply. I speak with the experience of being in multiple generations of staff/IFT so please heed what I am saying. As Aloosh pointed out, most of the staff here are simply hogging their positions and doing nothing for the actual functioning server while waiting for rage which isn't even half way ready to be a playable server. From what we've seen, your only concept of marketing is saying "soonTM" to the 5 people a month who ask when it will come out while taking your sweet time with the development. 2 months ago, while I was staff I had asked in the rage discord channel when they would be executing their "marketing concept" (which was copy/pasted from ChatGPT) and the response I was given was "probably as soon as we are feature ready so there's actual stuff to show". Mind you they had already launched the server once, it flopped, and they've been back at the drawing board for over a year now... And to this day we haven't seen a single rage snippet. Upon being further questioned the dev said "if you'd join the server and help push development forward, you wouldn't need me to answer this question". I'm being very vague because I don't want another forum ban, if you want proof you can message me. I don't know what moral high ground this side of staff thinks they have when they neglect the server with players to "work" on a hypothetical lala land that isn't even half ready. I and many others cannot make any sense of it. What allowed LSRP to stand the test of time was the standard of illegal roleplay it provided compared to every other option, and the truth is that everyone still supporting the rage server is simply too bad at roleplay to do anything meaningful on the SAMP server. They don't know what it's like to spend hours upon hours grinding for official status in a faction surrounded by high-quality players. They don't know what an immersive roleplay scene really looks and feels like. When they get bored of dying to factions on their LEO characters they band together on alts to either create or join sub-par factions such as 38 street. They are bad and have always been bad at roleplay, they care more about updated graphics and gameplay and want their own little space to rub each other off on GTA 5 and get away from all the "elitists" on SAMP and GTAW. At least, this is the vibe that we - the people who have put countless graveyard shifts into LSRP's underworld economy - feel when we see things like this. I would also like the state of our current staff team to be addressed. Tester applications are nothing but a clout competition. Voting consists of nothing apart from "do I know him? Yes/no. Yes, he's in PD and he's so nice! He would be a great addition!". The question of whether these people know how to roleplay is never asked. Most of the dev team intentionally does not work on SAMP for rage, and yet it is nowhere near a standard to compete against GTAW. I think this is a very selfish mentality. You should be developing for the players who are going to populate your server. If you want to serve your own desires then leave our community and develop your own. We as a community have made it clear countless times what we truly want, and are being ignored every day by the development and management team. IFT have put hours of brainstorming into script ideas to accommodate credit card/bank fraud, testing kits, weed growing, etc etc and when it doesn't fall on deaf ears we have Kane ragebaiting us on the forums. These threads are in the IFT board collecting dust for over a year now. I can tell you with 100% confidence that 90% or more of the server was or is currently cheating, myself included. I've burned myself out over the years and have not truly enjoyed roleplaying for a long time. I'm sure I'll be permanently banned for the cheating I did as I've made some of it public and I have no desire to come back. I don't blame anyone who uses any hacks though. When everyone has the unfair advantage it no longer becomes an advantage, it only levels the playing field. There is a certain level of trust that you cannot afford to lose with your community when it comes to consistent fuck-ups, favoritism, and false promises. You lost our trust years ago when you tried to launch V the first time. You lost our trust when nothing in the UCP voting section has been worked on or implemented since it was added, while you remove all donator packages for some overpriced bundle. You're losing our trust again now by allowing the same thing that happened to the PB last year to happen once more. We are human and we are all getting older. We don't have the time to be giving out second chances to groups with terrible track records. I feel like it would take a miracle for you as management (apart from @badhbh, she is the only one that truly did anything meaningful for the server as management/lead admin since relaunch) to recover from that loss of trust, so instead of happy hoping I think its more realistic for us to start saying our goodbyes. If you want to play with the same 20 people on LSRPV then be my guest. I would advise anyone who wants to play GTA 5 roleplay to go to World. I had my fun, met a lot of really cool people, and can say I contributed a lot to the illegal scene with you guys. To give my thoughts on who could fill the position, I always respected Bennemus and how he handled his role while he was a lead admin. He was always extremely transparent and before the post-covid closure he truly tried his best. If he still has it in him he could be the one that potentially turns this around.

The lack of transparency from staff to players and the lack of adequate punishments for cheaters and severe rule breakers are the main reasons for the downfall of LS-RP. This is a concern that me and multiple other dedicated IFT members raised ever since late Q1/early Q2 as we started recognizing the patterns that brought the server down back in 2020-2021. There are multiple threads that I have created back on the legacy forums, I would've gladly shared the link however those forums are currently down. One specific thread was in regards to players remaining unpunished for subpar roleplay (mainly in terms of provoking, robbing, deathmatch, etc), a thread that Martin Busato and Michael Dippolito were also contributing to and I am sure that they remember that. Veteran/experienced roleplayers didn't quit LS-RP because they got old or real life responsibilities took over. They gave up because of the standards of roleplay and this is something that players themselves cannot be blamed for as they are not the ones regulating the standards. The same 25+ year old players who were "tired of RP" are now very active on GTA World and I can assure you it's not because GTA V is much more pleasant to roleplay on - it's about the standard of roleplay. Many have complained about the over the top restrictions that World has however that approach is evidently working. It does get annoying at some point however it's simple quality assurance in terms of the overall standard of the community. You aren't able to speak your mind on LS-RP, let alone accuse certain individuals of ruining the server with their imcompetence as it is considered "bashing". You are also not able to lash our your frustration over things that you believe are absurd as that is also considered "bashing". The usual answer that you get from staff members to any of you "crying" is: "Why are you still playing then?" Once you create a "civil" general discussion like this one, it will inevitably grow into fed up players who have a genuine passion for the server to come and start "talking shit". I will refrain from using my regular approach to these kind of threads as I don't want to see this getting locked. I know they are just waiting for someone like me to pour their heart out and have an excuse to throw this in the bin. Many will ask me as to why I even bother commenting on this thread, considering that I am permanently banned and will most likely never be allowed back in the community. To give you my answer in advance, I truly cared for this community for many years and I wanted to share my two cents. Unfortunately, I don't see a scenario where players can regain the trust of the staff members and continue as if nothing happened. I became a Tester in early November and was basically advised by staff members to accept any incoming applications, as long as they haven't used ChatGPT in their stories. That itself shows how we have allowed literally anyone to join the server with the hopes of increasing the playerbase. We allowed the migration of players coming from low tier roleplay servers to disrupt the roleplay of veterans, leaving their subpar roleplay unpunished because "we need players". That only made experienced roleplayers leave and you were left with the players who can barely string any decent /me or /do without the usage of ChatGPT. TLDR: Management is at fault. No future for LS-RP without transparency and genuine dedication.

I would like to preface this post by first begging administration to let this thread run its course unless it is absolutely derailed to the point of idiocy. Let the discourse flow. I have, embarrassingly, been a part of this server since early 2008. My 12 year old self would ask I be euthanized if he knew I was still roleplaying at my current age. However, I have always had a soft spot for this community and the people that make it up. Roleplay is a hobby that keeps the brain fresh and creative. I am too old to employ ChatGPT in this response. These words come from my beating, probably-autistic heart. I have been around for the entirety of LS-RP's latest return. I watched it start off firing, continue strong and exceed my own expectations of longevity by more than a year. I have had some of the best roleplay of my entire cursed tenure in this iteration. I have now watched, sighing, as it degrades. There is not one single reason or issue to point to, but instead, a host of many. This last run was doomed to fail from Ground Zero. I expected nothing of it, and it continued to defy and surprise me everyday. GTA World has the playerbase, the features, the map - all a roleplayer with something better than an ancient laptop could desire. It, however, lacks LS-RP's innate soul. GTA World is not LS-RP. Do I know how to salvage this server? No. Do I think an aggressive marketing campaign will save it? No. Easy requests have been delayed, scripting has grated down to a standstill, and the only good administrators we have have somehow become a lightning rod for the frustration everyone feels. Do I attribute these issues to a single individual? No, the rot is systemic. Grow up if you're trying to affix blame to a single individual. Is there administration that should have long ago lost their title? Yes. Many of these others however, as aforementioned, are the only ones fighting to make the situation better and breathe life into a sever already gasping for its own. Stop shitting on them. They are the only thing keeping this Titanic-after-iceberg afloat. As we sit here and debate how to save a dying, geriatric body, I see only one way forward. It's bringing that soul back. Countless hours have been spent chasing away factions comprised of some of the best roleplayers I know in an attempt to punish the lowest percentile of their membership. Meanwhile, spree-robbers and moronic behavior runs rampant and untouched. If you want this shit to last, it's time to get in-game and lead by example. Create the change you want to see in this world. Create a community of roleplayers that people want to join. If we wanted to leave and discard this server, we all would have left already and wouldn't waste time typing up a response like this. The manifesto? I can only speak to my specific niche on the server. Center it around roleplay. We have a roster of strong official factions. Concentrate features into their hands. Encourage systems that allow them to connect with unofficial factions and water the plants seeded by these new factions. Create an ecosystem wherein factions are forced to rely on one another to achieve their aims. Narrow the scope of schemes and material distribution and force factions to center their aims into singular ones. X faction should be the kingpin of cocaine, while another should have the means to launder money. A third faction should pioneer good chopshop-based roleplay, while the fourth spends their time researching how to best portray the marijuana grow op they have in their basement in-game. These are limited examples that could easily be implemented. Reflect real life criminality. Encourage interplay between these groups, not because it results in cool screenshots, but instead, because it creates a semblance of necessity in sustaining their own faction’s expansion. The best roleplayers I know have always been encyclopedias of knowledge in their specific lane. Encourage this specialization. Stop policing concepts so harshly when the activity and wherewithal is not there to sustain or even acknowledge their approval. Let people cook. The second order of importance is clarity. Too many discussions occur behind closed doors. As a member of IFT, my ilk and myself are guilty of this. Expose everything to the soul of this community - the players. Act on their suggestions when good immediately, and offer insight as how to improve upon ideas when they're bad or otherwise lacking. The administration should not be a separate body from the players overseeing them, but instead, a sounding board for the players they are representing. Make it political. There should be no tenure for administrators that aren't enacting the goals of the general populace. Administrators should not be private police, but the speaking output for those they represent. To stifle discussion is to make your own job irrelevant. Unless blatant bullshit is happening, let everyone say their piece in the agora that is this server. Lastly, and most importantly: FUCK KRISK FUCK KIRIL SOKOLOV FREE SHARIF REYNOLDS FREE RIVA FREE ASESINO FREE DAMIANC UP BAHDBH AND RYE FUCK GTA V We can all watch this server die a slow, awkward death or we can take steps to be the change we wish to see in it. For many of us, this is our last chance at roleplaying and comprising membership of the server we want to see. Clown on this post to your heart's content. I have searched all of my empty pockets and cannot find a fuck to give.

They’ve been told not to engage in these types of threads. Instead, they’ve decided to split the community once again, and if you want to voice your concerns, you have to do it internally, within threads that only staff have access to. At least that's what I was told when I was still a Senior Admin. Edit: I honestly don’t know why they’d expect any staff member who’s still passionate about SA:MP to share their concerns internally. I’ve witnessed the behaviour from multiple LSRP V enthusiasts on the staff team. They outnumber you and actually bully you out.

I can elaborate. As someone who had access to all the RAGE progress, I can vouch that there were almost no discussions regarding the future of LSRP-V. Most threads, limited to staff members, have been inactive, show little real progress, and provide no clear picture of what we can expect. The only thing that actually stood out was how the economy would be handled, allowing cash transfers from SA:MP to LSRP-V at a ridiculous ratio, a ratio that would inflate the economy and force us to sell guns and drugs at the same prices we currently have in SA:MP. Furthermore, to my knowledge, a dozen modules have been pushed since last year, about one module per month, maybe even less. Most are just bug fixes or minor changes. Around 3 pages of suggestions have gone unaddressed, all from staff and RAGE insiders. Illegal factions have no real features, and drugs aren’t completed, even though they were promised 2–3 months ago. Other than a basic script that replaces the current warehouse system, called DarkNet, and a simple chop-shop system, we haven’t seen anything special regarding LSRP V. Also, before I resigned from my role at IFC, I was approached two days prior by LSRP-V developers for advice on what features they could implement for illegal roleplayers. Mind you, this is very recent and clearly shows that it’s not ready for launch. With all that being said, you’re clearly pulling your weight, and I respect your dedication, but if you really want to push for LSRP V, enlighten us. Let us know what immersive and glamorous features LSRP-V has that GTA World (its biggest competitor) doesn’t.

Nearly 3 days for that response is disappointing. Anyways, you failed to cover vital concerns in regard to SA:MP: Martin has been Head of Development for nearly 5 months, and as Badhbh pointed out, it’s something he wanted. What work or projects have been pushed since? What about the roadmap from June 2024. Are we to forget about it? What efforts have management and leadership gone through to find SA:MP developers? Are we ever going to address cheaters, or at the very least make it harder? How are we going to cater to the SA:MP community when, as previously mentioned, you’ve got staff members who hold key positions but don’t show interest in the platform? Now that the Illegal Faction Team is inactive, how are you going to persuade others to join and contribute? What about the mapping team? What about the rules and how admins enforce them? Marketing efforts? It is also no secret that you’ve been quite inactive yourself. You only came back because of these threads, which is something you did last year as well. If I recall correctly, you carried your weight for a couple of months and then disappeared again. What’s going to change this time? And lastly, how are you going to convince the SA:MP community that the server is here for the long run and is not being used to present a somehow “active community” to ensure a healthier launch for LSRP V?

The entire narrative around how developers are sacrificing their free time is also relevant to your average faction leader who arguably spends a lot more hours on the server trying to manage his own faction and contribute positively to the community. That narrative is also relevant to any average roleplayer, legal or illegal, who has contributed with their roleplay to the community, with their activity both in game and on the forums. That narrative is also relevant to any adequate Tester who is willingly helping players in game with their questions and who is also doing solid forum work in terms of administrating. That narrative is also relevant to regular Administrators who have to deal with Player Reports (IG & on forums), general administrative work, etcetera. And that narrative is extremely relevant to one of the most overshadowed teams on LS-RP: The Illegal Faction Team. I can confidently say that I have spent an unhealthy amount of hours doing my job and trying to make this server better. That involved handling complex Faction Reports, actively participating in IFT threads, discord discussions and meetings, coming up with new and interesting concepts of how we can please all the current illegal factions. I can go on and on about how much work I have personally put in however it is more important to focus on the obstacles that I've unfortunately had to deal with when it comes to eventually forwarding any ideas to developers. While MMartin was still around, we were discussing something like a withdrawal system or at least drugs having a negative impact on your character. Evidently that did not happen, never implemented - forgotten. Several IFT meetings were all about discussing new implementations however once we all just collectively agreed that the developers aren't really interested in any of our ideas, naturally we all just gave up. It was pointless to even talk about it on the meetings, let alone cook up a thread and literally "beg" for the attention of the Development Team. As a former detective in LSSD, I also had a lot of suggestions in terms of the Detective Job as it is severely outdated. I forwarded a lot of them to the Development Team however we got nowhere with it. Mind you that it wasn't about anything oddly specific or new, my suggestions were mainly about tweaking current scripts to make them more modern. Why am I saying all of this? It's not just the Developers sacrificing their free time and doing volunteer work. It's the entire community doing that, from your regular roleplayer to your Lead Admin. We are all doing this in our free time.

What's currently happening to the server isn't the first time—this is almost an exact repeat of what led to its closure around 2021. Management made the same mistake back then, shifted their focus on V while letting SAMP sink. It was a good call to bring back SAMP, brought in fresh players, and reminded everyone why this place has lasted so long. But, I thought they gonna bring SAMP for few months and re-launch V ASAP, but it took almost 2 years and yet it's not relaunched despite the promises "SOON™" and ongoing work. Anyone who tried V knows the script itself wasn't the problem, we had all essenstial features to roleplay, but it flopped not because of the script, but because of the complete lack of transparency and the broken communication bridge between management and the players. At the end of the day, it's all about the quality of roleplay, the fun and memories. We all agree that 150 dedicated, high-quality roleplayers with the right staff is way better than a bloated server full of DMers, shitty roleplay. Management's one job right now is figuring out how to make LSRPV stay active with good roleplayers, Whether we like it or not, SAMP has a limited future—no matter how much we try to milk it. We don't have to compete with other servers on scripts. We can stand out with the quality of roleplay and a management team that truly listens to its community. There were so many SAMP servers with "better" scripts and features than LS-RP, but they couldn't reach us because of the incredible quality of roleplay, fun and for its simplicity. Please don't take that away from us. With the right plan we can do that again on V. It's all about the roleplay and fun. I can spend a day doing /me and /do lines without any other feature and yet I'd have spent a memory day with real roleplayers. Community is passionate and they do care, otherwise they wouldn't bother their ass to write thousand words. Leadership it's time to come out with a big announcement and clear the air for everyone.

Been reading this for a while and wanted to finally chime in since others asked. You need to separate facts from assumptions and lies. It is clear as days that the main reason why you are seeing a decline in the community now is from the mistakes that the leadership put forward along with putting people in positions where they shouldn’t have been from the get-go. The decision making around a lot of things started before the first batch of official factions even got announced after the relaunch of SAMP. @Brigone being one of the firsts to vocalize the problems that the server was facing along with calling out bullshit that people were doing from the admin team and leadership perspective. The only reason that didn’t go anywhere was simply because of one reason. One person leaving doesn’t matter to us only because the server is doing totally fine and one leaving isn’t going to cause much of an issue. In other words, the admin team and specifically people in recognizable positions were too comfortable and let the server flow on. The next batch of folks started leaving when you saw that there was no progression in the script itself. The server becomes stall when there’s clearly no progressive updates, a roadmap that is ultimately outdated, along with the attention being at two different places. Why are you building on a foundation that is already in shambles. I have been both in IFT, led an official illegal faction, led a legal faction, and eventually came into the staff team. Simply put, the culture is toxic in those ranks where you’re going to have three groups. The folks that are vocal, quiet, and shit talkers. I am not going to name anyone here nor do I care since I already have stopped playing in this community, but the vocal folks were already zoned out from folks that were in positions, and it was like we were going against a militia of a brick wall. @Kev and @Clack vocalized a lot of these things in the standard meetings we had along with suggestions that never went anywhere. Ultimately, the developer team got shifted like the times and nothing came out of it. All in all, the culture of this community was horrible in the admin ranks itself and the mentality majority held. I will not even get started in the legal side of the house and how people were harbored from punishments along with the recent things @Aloosh called out on the situation of alt accounts. Marketing isn’t going to help this community gain numbers if internally those issues weren’t fixed. And I’m answering that question now as well they’re not going to be fixed only because of people and their egos. When you do call them out for their bullshit then they get censored or messages are removed. It’s the easiest thing they’ve done and will do. The main problem was the staff itself, and the positions folks held. The regaining of numbers is unrealistic when the serious folks themselves stopped playing. It’ll be very hard to bring them back due to them firsthand seeing the drama in the staff side. All in all, the community needs to realize that censorship and poor decision making from many folks is the reason we are here. We warned them about 8 months back that this is what will happen and these kinds of threads are what you will have to deal with if you don’t give transparency, updates, and honesty. They lacked in every area and here we are. I don’t mean to rub or derail this topic in any way, but it was worth putting this out there that these attempts in the backend happened, but these are the consequences of getting brushed off.

The lack of an adequate anti cheat encourages hacking. The lack of common sense upon reviewing cheater reports encourages hacking. Both of those are Management's fault. Kev's opinion in terms of how easy it is to cheat on this server is pretty much a public secret at this point. I believe we either spoke in the IFT chat or it was during an IFT meeting that I tried to explain how the lack of a good anti cheat is going to lower the playerbase. From what I do remember it was you, @badhbh, who couldn't understand how a poor anti cheat system can negatively affect the playerbase and cause it to shrink. Correct me if I'm wrong. Mind you that LEO factions are also heavily cheating, I have been part of several chases in which we wouldn't be able to find a certain suspect without the usage of nametags. PD/SD's usage of nospread was always accredited to their "training" and "well, that's their job. They are all good shooters" so that as well was nearly impossible to prove on forum reports. The reason for the lack of a decent anti cheat is subjective, my personal opinion is that it is very easy to do however that will mess up the gameplay for certain players as they are not able to operate without the usage of tags, aimbot and nospread. If a community like SOLS can withstand the nametag cheat, I fail to see how LSRP isn't able to combat it. That is, if they ever wanted to.

I’d like to start this post with a big gratitude to the people operating behind the scenes to make the server last this long. The truth is that from my perspective as just a roleplayer of the community there isn’t a whole lot that I am aware of what it takes to do tedious things like develop and invest in projects tailored to satisfy a big community. Having been apart of this server since 2011, and witnessing different phases of management and FM, the way that I view things now is that everyone has their idea of what they think is good for the server and while it may rub off on other people the wrong way, I know that none of it was in vain. There isn’t one specific demographic of people in this community to blame for the state of the server, because every one of us has contributed to the current state of it. There are bad apples in every genre. Depending on the course of how this topic proceeds I would love to elaborate more, but I’m curious to see how this will be navigated because the players who want to put in the effort to make things better gets mixed in with those who strive to be nothing but an utter nuisance. I’d like the staff team to please consider separating those who offer constructive criticism into perhaps a private user group with this goal in mind. For those who are immature, toxic, and doxxing please keep them far away from the topic at hand.

As much as I've appreciated the feedback we're going to be closing this thread as of today, and you may believe that you have not been heard - or that you've more to talk about but any further threads will just be locked moving forward. A few of you have sent concrete ideas for change to my forum PMs, and I appreciate it - and welcome others to do so too. This doesn't mean start PMing me with shit like "FIX THE SERVER" but if you've actual pain-points that we can actually do something about, let me know. We've got a good list from what's been raised to date, but at this point we're going around in circles on these threads. You've had responses from Management and the development team, as it's been a matter of days since many of these issues have been raised - we have nothing concrete to show in order to address them, as they're generally much larger issues. I know that may make the words seem empty but just give us a chance. I understand that hackings an issue as it always has been, I will take steps to see what can be done with our anti-cheat or policies surrounding the "burden of proof" required to issue a hacking ban. This isn't a quick fix and I appreciate your patience while we look into it. Please be aware that we only recently made a change to the anti-cheat to address a certain method of exploiting weapons on SAMP. We have and are capable of making changes to identify certain hacks/exploits. The community likely won't be updated regarding any future anti-cheat changes as that defeats the whole purpose, but I'm sure we'll let you know once we've addressed it. I keep seeing people mentioning 'voting' for LSRP:V to go ahead or not. I want to be very clear, that shipped sailed long ago. The relaunch of V is long past the point of voting for it. danut and n0de have been working on it tirelessly since it closed. RAGE is very much happening and I understand that brings concerns for SAMP - but as it stands, SAMP's closure isn't something on our minds at this very moment. I can't promise you if things don't improve, that SAMP will remain open with a skeleton crew of players but that's also where the community comes in. I've seen so much passion for SAMP in the various threads, however a large portion of these voices are now banned or have left for other servers. If you want SAMP to continue to be supported, we need to make sure it has players. While voting on V isn't something we'll be entertaining, having a much more open means of communication with the community is something I'm aware we need to work on. Hopefully once we get back to business after the holidays, you'll see the results of these efforts. The holiday season is well underway for everyone on the lead/management team, and this kind of discourse is the last thing we wanted to see. For those excited for RAGE, there will be promotional material coming very very soon. RAGE insiders are aware of this and have been working with the Marketing team to come up with promotional material, and the quality from what I've seen is absolutely fantastic (s/o Conor). This is stuff we've been working towards long before any of these threads ever went up, and unfortunately any actions we now take, I feel will seem like a response to this discourse. For those that don't want RAGE, you're probably not going to like seeing the stuff we've been working on recently and that's fine. We will be opening roles such as the Illegal Faction Team after the holidays, and currently Illegal Faction Council LOI's are open internally. I encourage anyone (from the illegal roleplay side) to get involved in IFT as they have a direct line of communication with management and the development team, and can influence the direction of future updates both script-wise and in terms of rules/ROE. Please do us a favour and not get your pitch-forks out as I lock this thread. It's run it's course. Let us prove to you in the coming days/weeks that we're listening. Have a very happy holiday, we'll see you in the new year. 🎄

Just on these points about no one from leadership responding. We want to allow open conversation to happen, the last thread blew up quick and then descended into what it was, didn't give us a real chance to respond properly and spent the time firefighting instead. This ones been open for nearly a day and thankfully hasn't spiralled. I'm currently reading what's been said in this thread and collating a response, so we can converse and be transparent, staff team to the players. Give me a little bit of time and you'll have a response within a few hours.

If you aren't willing to take any criticism of players who have previously cheated or are still actively doing it, you will be left with 10% of the community to speak with. Management's inability to implement a decent enough anti cheat has forced players who have been victimized by unrelentless cheating to start using cheats themselves, mainly as a precaution of not getting "caught slipping". If you are in an active PK war and your enemy is using nametags while you are not - you are 100% going to be ambushed and killed. This is not about a "learn to lose" mentality. Unfortunately, the only way you can outplay the P2W players is to be a P2W player yourself. I suppose your answer is to gather sufficient enough evidence and report the said person, right? Let me show you what happened the last time I followed that advice: The following counter report involved four videos of me (Francis Lanahan) logging in game and following very specific steps on catching another player (Dragan Arsic) from STCO cheating. TLDR: I followed all steps required in order to prove that he couldn't have any idea that it was me riding on a stolen bike, with a new skin, masked up. He was still able to identify me and shoot me down. He was initially banned for nametags until he decided to ban appeal months later. Despite having an entire documentary of his cheating, he was somehow unbanned. I have no bad blood with aidens however I am just giving this as an example of how your ways of countering cheaters just doesn't work. I am sure the community can give you countless of examples of how some of their clear cut reports were tarnished by staff members for "lack of evidence" because they knew that the ban would've been overturned in a staff report. All of your ways of handling cheaters just encourages more cheating. That is entirely management's fault and you cannot blame the players for doing it. You would rarely see an experienced LSRP roleplayer starting to cheat out of the blue, it is usually motivated by the lack of adequate punishments for cheaters or the absolute lack of punishments at all. Two wrongs don't make a right however you have to understand this point of view as this isn't personal, this is how the majority of your community thinks.

Being apart of the community since pretty much the beginning, The quality of management from back then to now has plummeted heavily. I don't need to elaborate on it because so many people have already explained why in this thread and on multiple threads over the years regarding this exact same topic, ironically to do with similar people in charge. It's a rinse and repeat cycle. Where is the engagement? Don't just say "We're sitting back and formulating a response". That's not good enough, you should be actively engaging in conversation and actively getting involved. Don't just cook up a generic response and say "We'll look into all of these changes for the better of the communities future". Because this community will not believe you now. Every single one of those staff members should be posting in this thread giving their honest opinions. You've been tagged enough times. Not just posting to either moderate or go after people for having an opinion. It either shows the staff don't care and just care about having a colour on their name or they're too scared to post their opinions in fear of being removed from the staff. Which in all honesty? Doesn't surprise me. Being told not to engage in the thread would also not surprise me. But overall, LSRP and the management have left it years too late, the hole is too deep and the damage is unrepairable. Too far gone for anything to be done. It's a salvage job at best in regards to keeping whatever scraps are left, around. Brigone summed it up perfectly in fact.

6 pages and 89% of it is literally solutions to the problem and you have the audacity with "rage insider" to even comment your 2 cents in on this. Why don't you go play LSRP V right now? Oh right. What change will happen on LSRP V that didn't happen on SAMP? Oh right. Majority of players came back/are here due to the LSRP name, not because anyones exciited for the LSRP V release. The small percentage that really hopes and wishes for LSRP V to flourish and do great are literal rejects of the SAMP scene. Sorry if I come off as a bit mean here, but can the people who are only here for LSRP V and never even wanted to see SAMP do good just fuck off? We don't need your delusional 2 cents that 'Rage is the only future!". No one from the Rage team can answer me this; What's gonna change management wise/or even staff wise when you compare SAMP and LSRP V. Is Mmartin magically just handing this over to someone else? Does everyone from the SAMP team just get booted off or do you keep x amount of people based on the friends group? Like I can't comprehend how delusional you rage insiders are.

Thank you to the admins for letting this topic breathe and everyone for the respectful responses and valuable contributions to this discussion. Many excellent insights and ideas are coming in. Let's keep that going and hopefully someone from the administration is compiling a list of suggestions to consider going forward.

writing this in phone I have been apart of this community since 2018, known about it since around 2016 over the years I’ve matured, been through relationships and seen this server in so many ways. I’ve found out so much about myself specifically thanks to this server it re-sparked the creativity I once had that was sucked out of me when I was even younger. It’s helped me through dark times, that especially helped me get my creative control back (as seen from my latest character stories) that fuelled me to keep going and see screenshot editing as an artform, kind of like writing a book or painting a picture to a story, that being one of the main reasons I haven’t used the auto screenshot tools and stuck solely to photoshop all these years. I’ve seen the history, dramas, notable factions and the legacy many have left and through all the “samp is dead” messages we’ve all lived through that are probably in the thousands, most of us refused to give up. SAMP will always have the vibe that GTA 5 servers could never replicate and after seeing the huge downfall of LSRP v first launch, I think many of us would agree it will be a disaster once again. I believe many would agree with me that instead of migrating to LSRP v they would rather go back to gta w since they either: already have accounts or friends or ingame assets which they don’t want to grind for again. A lot of us prefer SAMP for the simplicity of it, most of us have been around so long we know the map and functions and what objects have collisions and what can stop bullets by memory. This can’t be said for most of us if we are forced to move to LSRP v as a lot of us do. My thoughts on the matter on even just a tiny bump of revival, especially if mmartin has the email accounts that have been used all this time that might still exist in a mysql database somewhere, is do something similar littleitaly rp does I had completely forgotten I made an account there, but still get emails to my crappy school email I made 14 years ago about major updates. This might sound tedious but I see it as a “We’re still here and we haven’t forgotten you” type of way, sure you cant filter out all the bad apples but what can you do. This idea wasn’t directly inspired by the emails I got, but rather a few years ago I was outside with my friends and this one dude was on a mental health walk or something (i seriously don’t really know what he was up to nor can I remember his name he literally just joined us and talked about his life) and while chatting we got into gaming and he mentioned this one server he used to play called LSRP, my mind went fuckin wild realising the age this dude is and the fact the server I play on that was currently still regarded as my “Childhood” that was also his childhood though he was way older made me realise he really has been around that long, I mentioned it to him that it’s still up and alive and swell (this was way before the first shutdown and major ddos attacks) and he talked a bit about the server, the factions that were around then and notable players he remembered even asked if him or that guy or she still play, which I had no answer for (I couldn’t remember or didn’t know those people) but could comfort with the fact that many from his era are still around. I might’ve made him return to the server or even got him rewatching old clips from the server where he used to spend his days in. The moral of this story is, this server has been around for so long, It’s been an amazing way for people to find out more about themself and what they’re interested in, hell YBN nahmir’s lyrics are probably from his characters from this very server, but migrating to LSRP v is not a good idea, I just hope that if it does migrate, the samp server stays with the a before mentioned and I do not wish to continue on a gta 5 platform that a lot of us aren’t accustom to nor have any nostalgia, passion, artistic expression both by skins and screenshots and the way you type your /me’s and /my’s, funding (have you seen the recent ram prices??) and simplicity. It is now 1:45 AM I don’t even know if I made any sense but, heres hoping samp strives for another few years.

Gather up the small group of people who have so much say over the SA-MP community while clearly having no intentions of helping/role-playing here & open a separate community for the rage server if it means so much. If anyone wanted to or wants to roleplay on GTA V they will join world, it's that simple. People stuck around on SA-MP because they actually enjoyed SA-MP and it's features. Yes it's an old game but the simplicity of it is what kept players, Roblox doesn't have super graphics yet maintains a strong PB. Badbh is one of the only ones I see interacting with the community and trying to better things, everyone else thinks they are above the community. Now look, you have 14 players IG during peak hours because rude admins who haven't even been around long want to exert their power & act like they are gods gift. Nobody with the "rage insider" tag should have any say over what happens on SA-MP when they CLEARLY don't give a fuck about it.

I'm sorry and I don't mean to shit on anyone's work but I am personally not satisfied with this reply. It honestly feels like absolutely all of the previous replies given to all of the previous threads like this with no clear targets, concise suggestions or concrete plans for the future. There were plenty of solid suggestions given in this thread and a simple "we will look into automating some tasks on the UCP without mentioning which ones or how we plan to do it" cannot be considered a satisfying reply and I think I speak for everyone who contributed to this thread. Please take the holidays to reflect on the situation and let's all try to come up with an actual plan together, have the community vote on all of the pain points. We're all poking you hoping for a meaningful reply and nothing's been given yet. One vote could be if the community wants staff to continue developing LSRP V or focus solely on SAMP. Because at this point, I can say with complete certainty that both projects are doomed to fail.

Having been a member of this community since 2012, I have witnessed the server’s “death” multiple times—once before the closure and once when the RAGE server was shut down for rework. I played on both platforms and saw potential in each of them. When it comes to the RAGE server, I was among the last players who remained active. I grinded, roleplayed with factions, and yes, I robbed a lot of houses to steal guns. I come from an era where all I needed was /me and /do to create roleplay. I can absolutely create RP on my own and genuinely enjoy it. Overall, I enjoyed both platforms. However, when it comes to heavy roleplay, immersion, and creative storytelling, SAMP LSRP is undoubtedly unbeatable. I initially came back to SAMP for nostalgia, but I stayed for the community especially the returning veteran players who built truly great factions. SAMP has, and still has, a lot of potential. Unfortunately, it is often said that the core script is outdated and that developing new features risks breaking it. Still, we have many underrated features such as /spawn, holdable items, and more. SAMP has soul. SAMP has culture and over a decade of lore something RAGE cannot replicate. It is a new universe with unfamiliar aesthetics. As an IFT member, I tried to support both platforms, but the lack of developers and communication caused me to lose motivation. When it comes to SAMP, we at least want the top voted features that were presented on the UCP. As for RAGE, nobody except staff knows where it is heading. What about the economy? New rules? ROE? Price agreements for guns and drugs? Players want to play on LSRP SAMP not because of “shitty” computers, but because they are familiar with the platform. They have lore, friendships, and years of developed roleplay skills. It is culture. Many players with high end PCs returned to LSRP SAMP and spent months building factions and developing characters for a reason. I will not try to compare our community to another, but when it comes to management, LSRP currently cannot compete. That said, we do have many good staff members and dedicated admins such as @badhbh, @Rye, @Aloosh, and others who genuinely care about this community. I have seen their work and their dedication firsthand. I cannot say much about the rest of the staff, as most of them are new faces to me and have not made a noticeable impact. I agree with many of you here, especially @Kev, @Aloosh, and others who cared enough to share their input with heavy hearts and genuine passion. This community needs to hear the actual community. Listen to the everyday player. Listen carefully. When it comes to marketing, unfortunately, the only real way to market this server is to play on it. Encourage staff roleplay in-game, make management approachable to everyone ( @badhbh is very kind, by the way), create subreddits, and spread the word. I have seen several respectable YouTubers who actively test SAMP servers and invite their followers to play if they enjoy them. https://www.youtube.com/@InternetRob https://www.youtube.com/@TheJizzy

I’m less concerned about the lifespan of GTA:V or GTA:SA themselves, because a strong modding ecosystem can far outlive the base game’s relevance. GTA:SA was technologically outdated for years, but its community kept it alive thanks to the freedom, tooling, and culture that allowed for endless creativity. A great example of this is the Russian servers, which have consistently pushed boundaries with unique game modes. In that sense, it’s entirely plausible that RAGEMP could follow a similar path with GTA V, especially given its modern tools. You're dealing with a whole different problem. LS:RP on SA:MP set the standard for serious roleplay early on and became the benchmark that shaped the community’s expectations. Because it launched first and gained momentum quickly, it attracted a large, dedicated player base along with experienced staff and rich lore (`con rispetto). This created a strong, established ecosystem that was hard for other servers to compete with. Even when "technically" more advanced or innovative servers appeared (and I can name a few: IBP-Roleplay, Core Roleplay, LC:RP (hey @Aberdeen), Ultimate Roleplay — a production of yours truly), players often stayed with LS:RP because they had built meaningful connections, characters, and reputations here and leaving meant giving up all that social investment, which is a huge barrier. GTA World holds a similar position today. Thanks to its early presence and growth, it has established a community and culture that new platforms struggle to rival. The real challenge isn’t just offering better features but building the same level of trust, history, and player commitment that LS:RP demonstrated years ago. That kind of foundation takes time and is very difficult to surpass, specially when you've gone the opposite route time and time again.

It's no secret that myself and the rest of my faction's leadership has butted heads with Aloosh numerous times in the past, but I want to take a moment to applaud the honesty he has shown in his contributions to this topic and the previous one. Clearly he is someone who cares about the people and LSRP succeeding. That's precisely the attitude all staff need to embody if there's any hope in turning this ship around. That is real leadership that people can respect.

This is key. Putting a defining decision of that magnitude in the hands of the players is the type of revolutionary change needed to reignite this community and kickstart a new era where all administrative decisions are driven by community feedback. As @Lannetta and others have suggested, the players should also be allowed to vote in the entirety of the staff team; this is the best way to bring about the type of cohesive, one-team, community-first culture players have been starving of for years. How exactly that voting process works deserves a public topic of its own but it's totally doable, it just requires the powers that be to check their egos at the door and put the community's wishes first. In fairness to @jack: he has the difficult responsibility of facing us as the spokesperson but these decisions aren't his alone to make so we need to afford some grace and time for them to come up with a proper game plan. I must say, however, we have seen these sorts of promises before and more often than not they turn up empty, which is precisely why LSRP's fate needs to be put in the hands of all of us. Many of us have been here contributing for well over a decade. LSRP means a lot to all of us and it's simply wrong for a select few to make monumental decisions that are in direct opposition of the masses. Not only is the type of transformational culture change we are calling for necessary, but it is the leg up required to drag the morale out of the gutter, get people roleplaying again, and from there bring LSRP back to competitiveness in the market. The reality is that, as of this moment, LSRP in its current sad state is a total non-factor. It'll take all of us coming together to change that, but as we, the people, have echoed for as long as I can remember: it starts at the top.

In the same way you are unpaid volunteers, the people you speak of who have actively hacked, mass DMed, etc were also unpaid volunteers and arguably adding more positive contribution to the server while doing so - and maybe they were fed up of being treated like they were below every other sub team on this server. I speak for myself and IFT when I say that we have written up countless threads for script ideas, were moderating faction conflicts on a near daily basis at one point, handling faction reports (most of us being non-staff), handling schemes (some of the heads being non-staff), the list goes on. Nobody here is paid and we do this out of love for this community. I do think if Martin wants RAGE to do well then he should put some money up. GTAW has and look at their ROI. You can't expect to achieve this hypothetical dream outcome for free. I don't want to bash you because you are making an attempt to reason with the community, but I have to call out some of the bullshit in this response. You were on as long of a hiatus as Martin before coming out to address our concerns on this thread. I haven't seen anything of substance in this statement, no real accountability or game plan for rage. Maybe this is coming soon so we will wait. On the topic of cheating, I can tell you as someone who has dealt with faction conflicts before and after I started using them, the game feels much more balanced with them and it has been this way for over a decade. We can discuss the morality of it all day but it is not fun trying to locate someone, do a hit, evade law enforcement while they can see you from across the map and you can't see them - and people can only take the guaranteed loss so many times before they decide to even the playing field. If you as administrators installed nametags (I use that as an example because it is the easiest one to use in terms of spotting other nametaggers) and turned them on while on admin duty I guarantee you would catch at least 5 a day. I doubt anyone will admit it but the closet cheaters reading this will tell you that you can know instantly if someone is nametagging when you have them. I think I have been in more faction conflict than most on this server due to the nature of the factions I've ran over the years and let me tell you having a Mexican standoff between two hit cars from East Beach to Seville because both cars are nametagging has been quite the hilarious scenario. If you spent some time roleplaying this would all be common knowledge to you, but the fact that you can’t trust the judgement of your own administration and have unbanned blatant cheaters (the kind who don’t bother to hide their cheating, at least I kept it a secret…) as documented by @Clack shows that you are truly out of touch with how the server operates and it makes me question how you managed to rise to a management role. It's like the first rule of fight club we just don't talk about it. I don't blame anyone who uses them since there has never been an anti cheat measure to combat it, and most people who are banned for cheats nowadays can send in a staff report with a sob story and get off on a "benefit of the doubt" unban. So why would you not cheat?

Hi, I’m an outsider, but I’ve been on and off LSRP forever, and on SA-MP even longer. Figured I’d finally make an account to actually weigh in instead of just watching the show these threads always create. You’ve grabbed serious attention: 10k+ views show people are watching, even if they’re not jumping in directly. People keep saying to advertise and market the server, but you can’t sell something that doesn’t know what it wants to be SA-MP or RAGE. It’s a mess, it stinks, and it’s a turn-off for anyone serious, whether roleplayers, contributors, or new players - simply because the effort isn't there. Leadership needs to get their act together and make this clear ASAP. But from the outside, it does looks like the real devs have moved on to the RAGE:MP project after Kane left, and Mmartin still calls the shots despite being mostly absent. The rest of management feels like a public-facing shell with no real power beyond basic mod perms and in-game ranks lol I seriously doubt anyone with real authority would respond so vaguely to critique, beat around the bush and try to bury a thread instead of taking action. Leadership seems mostly empty with people just handling random tasks while the actual "shotcallers" are gone, burnt out, or on hiatus. If you can’t respond effectively, make an action plan, or address real community feedback, why even hold the position? Taking roles without contributing kills trust and hurts the server’s integrity or what's left of it, anyway. Call a spade a spade, if LSRP SA-MP has become more of a burden than something worth engaging with, why not just call it and be done?

I'd like to chime in regarding the upset at Martin's activity, mostly inspired by @Clack Currently, Martin is abroad hopefully enjoying himself a lot more than I am. We're unlikely to have a response from him at the moment given the fact that he's on holiday and not expected to be available for the duration. Hopefully a little clarity and transparency on the Management structure could help: Martin promoted myself and bobster to Management months ago now, following a discussion where we agreed that the bottleneck to a lot of things was waiting on Management approval. Martin gave me the role of Head of Operations - and bobster was promoted to Head of Staff. I've done my best in the past few months to reduce these waiting times, and ensure that nothing much is sat around waiting for Management's green light. Head of Operations was Martin's role. He is now Head of Development and is generally not involved in the day-to-day running of the community anymore. When he held this role, and the community were upset with his activity (or perceived lack of), I could understand. Martin is still involved, and when changes are made - his input is invaluable but ultimately, the server's management is 10x more active than before in recent months, we haven't gone anywhere. All of this is 100% intentional as Martin's main focus can now be on what he enjoys, which is development. I've seen some of the work he's done for RAGE in particular, and I'm so excited for the community to get their hands on it. I'll happily lecture Martin for not logging into the forums, but the management/leadership and development team generally converse outside of LSRP platforms altogether. Nobody has "run away with the donations" if that was the case, the server would not be online because nobody else is paying for it. This was something I originally noticed the few bad actors who some of you have let work you into an absolute tizzy, start by saying. The fact that the server has not once gone unpaid should do more than enough to dispel that conversation. I've seen people complain about management's activity and lack of approachability, but praise my activity, care and attention in the same breath. What is it you're looking for exactly from Management, or feel that you/the server or community are lacking?

Remember making this with the boys as a DTO and turning it into Harlow Bloods, had some good memories here until I left a few months ago but shout-out the day ones❤️ and a shout-out to man like Rush and MrMardy

Just by hiding Kev’s post to make sure there’s nothing too harsh being said about the managment or the server’s state says a lot. Instead of putting that energy into fixing what is clearly broken, we are unfortunately dealing with control issues and fragile egos. If we take the last thread into consideration as well, there is about 12 pages worth of communities’ concern on what is going to happen next. That alone should be enough to show that there is something seriously wrong. Managment, I’m not sure if it’s clear but it is the community that shapes the server, and what you are doing right now is just spreading trust issues across your players. People might be “heard”, but you are still hushing them down, quietly filtering what you want to hear or just outright delete the post, and yet there’s still no plan being show on how things are going to improve. The ship is sinking.

The blunt truth is all products decline eventually. However, you can stave off decline via: Improvement - Faster, cheaper, nicer, easier to use Refreshing things - New design, new packaging, new features Find new users - Different group or for a new purpose Reposition the server - Change the story about why it matters What doesn't work: Shouting louder and marketing the same product Pretending decline isn't happening Claiming something is still good because it used to be is a risk. You either fix it properly with a clear deadline, or shut it down and move on. Dragging it out only wastes people's time. Something that can bind people together is a clear vision. Clearly explain how LS-RP's SAMP future can beat RageMP. If that's not clear, then people won't stay. Either produce a believable roadmap that gives players a real reason to choose here over there, or accept the answer the market has already given and step aside. I've got nothing but love for this server and community, I hope the management team gather the feedback and figure it out.

I'm trying to spit some facts here and I genuinely hope I won't get banned for what I'm going to say. And I still believe that honest advice is hard to hear but beneficial; good medicine tastes bitter but cures the disease, and the reason why I type this out cause I love this community. I'm sure we, the people who posting shit under the thread do to cause we could've just watched it dying slowly without giving two fucks. The current management team is composed of backstabbers who took over the server from our beloved DamianC, back then the admin team genuinely had connections with the players, they really CARED about us and treated us like friends, one hand washes another and both wash the face. Countless funny events, I remember one time one member passed away and the admin team organised a campaign so our community member can be remembered in a special form together, that's how admin team making connections with players instead of taking their donation money without feeding anything back to the server! But later? Things changed upside down. Looking back, we find that every management team has had its share of mistakes, scandals, opacity, and corrupt administrators. Frank Krane N krisk, opaque IFM and the list goes on and on but why we would love to come back to play like it's a recycle? Cause it's all about the people around us, the e friends you made along the way. The script doesn't matter at all, all you need is imagination and be able to think outta the box. Roleplay is basically the same no matter whether you got a sick ass script coming straight from 2050 or the same shit from 2010. [Marijuana 100] and Marijuana - 28.0g (Large) doesn't make no different in game at all. The reason why lsrp kept bringing us back is the nostalgia and the friends with you, also the trust-worthy SAMP server with its undeniable reputation. It has always been the heavy text roleplay based server on SAMP. We also love the old LS-RP cause the old wild wild west style, the community itself gatekept the concept heavily so it fosters you to get better, otherwise you'd get roasted daily. If you can't get better, you might just move on to a whole brand new concept yourself. If you can't adapt the community's toxic enviornment, you can move along too. There were barely any snowflakes on Skype, forum, but nowadays everything changed. You can't talk bad about anyone otherwise a forum ban coming your way. Testers / Admins also losing their ability to justify whether the suggestions are useful or not, they just shut everything down like it's a community country like China / North Korea. It's really bad for the community. Cause it's players made the community, players are the voice. And in the end, I wanna say it's not about the marketing. You wanna promote things on Myspace or Facebook? It's long gone, SA-MP is long gone. Have fun while it lasted as you can, cause once you type in 'LS-RP' on youtube, only deathmatch videos would pop out and it's a bad root. Cause it only attracts DMers. The new generations don't give a single fuck about SA-MP heavy text based roleplay, they all getting attracted by those FiveM voice server, the hardcore heavy text based period has long gone. This time I'm bringing GTA:World up so you can clearly see the difference between two servers, LS-RP got some die hard hardcore roleplayers while GTA:World has become a light roleplay server. This is the trend. I'm afraid LS-RP would end like that way as well. I'm sure we all hitting 25s or 30s, this generation's player base would only decrease. So give it a last shot, mass unban or selectively unban a certain people. We finna beat on the dead horse again, give it a one last go. Also you really think LS-RP:V is a good idea? Come on. We all knew what happened since the last grand openning, it went downfall, we could've hardly hit 50 after the first month. It's not attracting any new players since the old ones always stuck on the GTA:World. Come on management team, do something. We love this community that's why we'd let our voice out. Like I said, we could've walked away without giving a damn but we still chose to speak out. Cause we love this community and we don't wanna see it's dying out.

Censorship is a short-term fix that causes long-term damage to player trust. Time and time again, Los Santos Roleplay has needed its leadership to be more than just present, but to be actively engaged and willing to adapt. If the goal is to save the server, the solution is open dialogue, not a delete button. Let the community speak. I also firmly believe that shifting all focus to GTA:V is/was a mistake. LSRP lacks the first-mover advantange in that space; the market is already saturated with established servers that have spent years refining their features and communities. LSRP’s unique identity and legacy are rooted in SAMP (were they were also the first mover). Trying to play catch-up on a new platform while neglecting the core community here is a recipe for failure. We need to lean into what makes us unique, not chase a train that left the station years ago.

I shit on Valenti a lot because it's fun, and troll on here but in all honesty, you done fucked up people The simple fact that you banned almost all of the decent players (there's good factions around, but obviously cannot hold up this server) because of idiotic reasons and as a staff, could not take accountability to the fact that you had a shit management is the problem. And this problem won't change. When I had my faction running at the start of the SAMP revamp (say what you want about our quality of rp, your thoughts, etc, I don't give fuck. Simply correlating my point in a generic sense) we were actively role playing and contributing. How df does it take the staff team (at the time) 3 OOC months to approve business requests, and then another 2-3 months to even consider our strawmen requests and schemes which were ultimately shot down. This staff team has alienated this community to the point of mediocrity and complete failure. Wanna see the PB boom and have maybe one small sliver of hope? 1. Unban everyone and begin accepting applications without holding a gun to their heads. 2. Enforce strict rules, and discipline as necessary to ensure a seamless transition of an increased PB. 3. Process any and all applications in no more than a 2 week review period (if as a staff you're overworked, then figure it out. That's literally your position). 4. Drop LSRPV, either ride this shit out to the fullest or focus on 1 thing at a time. You will never be successful managing 1 failing server and trying to develop another failure. This is common sense and the fact that you continue to think it'll work is crazy. 5. Use Reddit, Steam, and Discord for mass advertising. Youtube and all that other shit doesn't work, and is labor intensive. If you make short reels of engaging rp, it'll entice players and bring back old ones. 6. Someone said it, but remove @Mmartin and replace his ass with someone who gives a fuck, and can explain where LSRP's money went all these years. He's dead weight, once you can come to terms with this then can a new kingpin drown the community's thirst for intense role play. I guarantee you if I was unbanned (not that I care to be at this point, but I guess I still give a shit about this community because of nostalgia) I can bring 6-7 players with me. There are other banned players I know who can do the same. It's really not a hard concept.

I get where you're coming from because when staff had decided to turn back to SAMP instead of Rage, it was the exact same thing that happened. Players joined the team showing solely interest in SAMP and not Rage, this is over a year ago I'm speaking in perspective of, when it first relaunched. Every new member of the staff joined only showing interest in SAMP and not Rage. Soo I understand your point of view from a different observation because, exactly how you are describing how you felt the staff team direction was heading into RAGE over SAMP for the past six months. And I completely agree with you, that it should be divided into two sections, if we're gonna keep both platforms open. End of the day, we've got a community set in two different directions no matter how you look at things. Now from my point of view, the main concern of this topic for the SAMP players is there isn't enough SAMP updates coming out for players to keep interest in LSRP SAMP, because the current Devs are mainly involved in the RAGE side of things, and weren't interested in SAMP to begin with. Yes, a year ago? There was a good few Devs onboard in the team, as well as testers which all arrived solely for SAMP, now for me personally at that time I was disappointed that this wave come only showing interest in SAMP and not trying to help RAGE reform itself, but I understand that people just have their own interest and opinions; soo why pursue them to help out in something they don't want to help out in. Two weeks into SAMP opening it was pretty clear that people who wanted to come in as staff members for SAMP didn't have the drive or commitment to actually overall help the server grow, Devs at that time were pushing out modules to have about five to ten percent of the SAMP dedicated testers not even help with testing the modules, which frustrated those Devs and in turn made them leave; and those testers were eventually as well removed for not helping to commit to the server. Again, this is just my point of view from what I witnessed in my time. Only thing I could really add to try and assist LSRP SAMP is if any of you know a Dev that can code in SAMP and is interested in doing that type of thing, let them know about the concerns and ask them to apply for a position, if you want to help the server out yourself but don't have any coding skills? Apply to become a tester when a committed Dev to SAMP arrives to help them test modules and push out updates regularly.

I've seen a few comments throughout the thread alluding to the fact that developers intentionally do not work on SA-MP and instead work on developing RAGE instead, I'm not sure where this has come from but it's not true at all. The development team are all volunteers, who do this in their spare time out of passion for the community and to see the persistent attacks on them is frankly very demotivating. There have also been comments that we should all just prioritise on SA-MP from a development standpoint, but it's not as simple as that. As Duco has alluded to previously PAWN is a very antiquated language that isn't well taught, if at all these days; coupled with the fact the SA-MP codebase goes all the way back to 2007, it is not a trivial matter to add even basic things. Speaking for myself, and Danut, we both joined the development team for RAGE; I personally have no knowledge of PAWN to assist with SA-MP, and I already spend the little free time I have developing alongside my other duties as a lead admin. Given all that, I think people don't realise how lucky they were when a developer like Cake was around who had the free time and knowledge to push out significant updates to SA-MP. Robstrap is the resident SA-MP guy these days, and he's been holiday for a little bit know, but I know from speaking to him he intends to continue his work developing SA-MP on his return. No matter your opinion on which platform you prefer, just be mindful of the time and effort people put in for free in their spare time; you might not agree, but they're the ones sacrificing their free time.

1. Provide me with any sufficient enough statement from a Lead Admin+ in terms of any significant improvement of SAMP in this current calendar year. If you do believe that you can "grind your way" to Lead Admin from Tester by truly being invested in LSRP and contributing positively, you are mistaken. It's a public secret as to how people go up the hierarchy and it's no different than your regular 9-5 office job. 2. All of the developers are currently focused on RAGE. Do you realistically think that management would hire someone as a developer if his sole purpose is to code on SAMP? Their clear intentions are to transcend to RAGE entirely, so even if someone had genuine interest to do that, he wouldn't get the job. 3. There were plenty of factions that were very active and improving the quality of the roleplay that we have however if you managed to read half of the posts on this thread, you would realize why those people refuse to contribute further until things change. 4. Plenty of talented mappers have done a solid job on LSRP however (for some reason), mapping additions were very selective and some took months to be implemented. Aberdeen cooked up a mapping on Star Street for the SOVA business and I'm not even sure if that mapping was added after all. I had to beg to management and the mapping team for a map to be implemented, MIND YOU it was done by a player who isn't in the mapping team. All they had to do was add it in and that took them (if they even added it) more than 4 months at this point. 5. You have proven to everyone that you have read all of our posts diagonially.

On LSRP with the current script? Maybe. But I have seen upcoming SA:MP servers who have a fully customized weapon and vehicle system. A lot of dope things can be implemented on a SAMP server, it's all up to the dedication of the developers to do it. However, the majority of the people who have commented here have stated that the script isn't why they've spent so many years on this server. Those players are usually good enough roleplayers to not be dependent on script features to come up with good roleplay concepts.

I just want to thank everyone who participated in this discussion and providing a lot of constructive criticism. And another thanks to the staff team for allowing this topic to stay up this long, I know it wasn’t easy but this is extremely necessary. Let’s give the staff a chance to respond and see where their heads are at with all of this.

Plenty of English servers (albeit not at LSRP standards) are easily hitting the 100-200 player range. We're not asking for 2013 peak PB. We're asking for the bare minimum, 100-150 players made more than enough people comfortable to get on at all hours of the day/night. Old SAMP Every RP servers (and other gamemodes) would average around +130 players, with LSRP +300-1000(?) players. Modern SAMP If you do the bare minimum and tend to community needs, you'll easily slam 100-150 players. While GTA 5 is modern, the only reason SAMP is still thriving is because the newer games lack the charm and mixed simplicity-complexity of GTA SA. It's not about low-end PCs or nostalgia, there's more than enough evidence that there are willing committed players. I like many can't be fucked for V, it's just not the same. If you want to work on LSRP:V, establish a whole separate team and leave this community, establish two teams (V and SAMP), no mixers. Hand off SA's development to whoever is in charge of the new team. The only place you two merge is Staff Management and PR/Marketing. There are a whole bundle of very capable developers out there, even more so in V because of the language support is more openly there. SA-MP developers have came a very long way, an amateur creates amazing things and shares them on Open MP forums or on their silly little YouTube channel. There are ways to deploy servers and integrate test scripts without leaking/wrecking the server itself. Work with all these sparky eyed lil programmers and get something to work out. Stop aiming for monthly outputs and aim for weekly ones. Split the dev team: Master (networking, major server features), Hotfixes/QA, Mapping and a smaller team contributing QOL stuff. Give them different levels of access.

Sure, we break some balls in here, but I go way back. I think the bottom line is, either roleplay or don't. Admittedly my take doesn't have a lot of nuance to it, as I don't have much experience with the staff and I've only been back on this server for a year, but my history with this place goes as far back as '09. Historically, the staff at large have notoriously been a tyrannical regime who log on to pat each other's backs and make life harder for everybody else, and while they may very well be mostly to blame for the dip in activity, I can't speak to it because I don't involve myself much in these things. The server has always had its peaks and valleys, but I think if we want to save this server, a significant amount comes down to getting in-game and leading by example, we should get to the heart of this thing and address what we're all here to do. Multiple people log onto this forum every day, more than 1,000 people are active on the server's Discord channel as we speak, and yet the server's activity is no where to be seen; barely anything out of RAGE, and yet people still dutifully log on, each week, to see how SAMP is doing. @shotgun shawty I agree with most of the things you said, but this is pretty reductionist. The same could be said for any crime-based roleplay server, but interest has waned for you specifically. There's still people out there more than capable and willing to find new, original takes on that kind of roleplay, so if it isn't your cup of tea now, then fair enough. The game being old has nothing to do with it either, there are a lot of players who enjoy the novelty of it and prefer how its graphics and art style lend more toward the imagination.

Unless management participates in these kind of threads, they render useless. Last thread was 8 pages with not a single comment from management (Oh my bad, they had one post saying not to doxx or flame or whatever and then closed it). The vets can toss ideas and reflect until next month but without management actively responding to them, which doesn't seem like they plan on doing, it's pointless.

LSRP has developed the SAMP server to the point that there's just simply nothing else to do, and even if there was, there's not enough developers for the job. We're about to hit 2026. Let's accept that SAMP is obsolete and there is virtually no point spending resources into it. The SAMP server had its brain death years ago. The heart is beating, people get the illusion that SAMP might survive, but in reality, it died a long time ago. We hate to see the server we spent our childhoods on get closed, but conservatism of something that no longer has interest is just bad. I personally think that the SAMP server should just be allowed to have the peaceful death it rightfully deserves after decades of roleplay and stay as a wonderful memory in our heads instead of a last ditch effort gone wrong. RageMP is the only way to ensure LSRP's survival. This is just simple facts. If anything, LSRP was extremely delayed to make the move to RageMP. GTA5, in every single aspect, is superior to the literal team deathmatch server we had on SAMP since 2024. For more than five years, people have migrated from LSRP to GTAW, because it was just simply the same thing they had in LSRP, but with better scripts, better graphics, and better everything, yet for some reason we're still insisting on trying to bring back SAMP to life. The player counts speak for themselves. Your average Joe is no longer interested in a 20 year old "nostalgia" that is being clowned on by insiders, and outsiders. Being in LSRP used to mean something back in the days. It doesn't mean shit anymore because we just kept trying to revive a corpse that died in 2021 with false hopes and false promises. It's over guys. Just like everything in life, SAMP finally died, whether we like it or not.

I'm kinda a new player on this community, joined in June 2025. It was an amazing half a year where I could develop my RP and also my English skills that were wack. I met one of the best collectives I could've find and I got along with them really good showing that I'm trustworthy. For that, even I've landed late on this server with so much heritage, I felt every session of gameplay. I had the chance to meet older and experienced players that brought the lore with their RP skills. Please, don't let this die, not now. As many said here, LSRP is known for the SAMP scene. If you want to /sell/ your product to the mases you should aim for the feelings first and show the community a straight direction without cloudy ways. /The man/ laying almost dead on the hospital still breaths, hardly but it does, at least. There's still hope. I think there's no better to do for the server, mapping it's cool, the systems need a little fixing, etc. Nothing on Earth it's perfect and people should unite, showing a honorably last dance that beautiful even the trollers and LSRP's biggest haters would love to join and fix their behaviour. I don't know what's the hype for GTA V, there's also World who took the floor and as @kermit said: Their assets and goods are there, no one's looking to farm their days again.

I honestly think before LSRP V is even considered to launch; what would the lore of that server even be? Is it a continuation of the lore from LSRP SAMP carried over? Or is it going to be a completely new environment, with new characters, new factions and a new server lore? I find it really difficult to differentiate between them because at the beginning of LSRP V’s launch we were told we couldn’t roleplay Valenti because it is a new universe and new lore. Yet, people were still carrying their trade mark names from LSRP SAMP (an example being Natasha Valentine) and carrying them over. This is also something that needs to be clarified and set in stone. Some factions that were a thing on LSRP SAMP were allowed to cross over while some weren’t.