Martin_Busato

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

Why is this goof allowed to troll and derail my topic? Ban him already so he can move on with his life and we can get back to a constructive discussion. Those posting here have provided a wealth of feedback and suggestions for management/staff to utilize. Someone should be monitoring this to ensure it stays on topic and blatant trolls are dealt with accordingly. The purpose of this topic is for the community to come together to find solutions to improve LSRP. The hyperbolic "LSRP is dead" comments aren't helping the cause. If you think it's dead, what are you still doing here? I have been quite busy lately but I will chime in on the discussion again when I have time.

New private forum topic for all usergroup members to read: Borgata - Private Forum - Los Santos Roleplay Keep up the outstanding work, everyone.

Thank you to everyone for your contributions and honesty in this discussion. This topic has brought the dissatisfaction of the player base to light and it's good to see staff, particularly Mmartin, engaging in the discussion; I am optimistic that our voices are being heard and some form of positive change will come from this. This topic has garnered a lot of attention and LSRP staff would be doing itself a major disservice to ignore our calls for change. It's also important to remember that we (the players) need to play a major role in making this a good place to role-play. We all need to be introspective and find ways to help LSRP improve, regardless of your role in the community. If you have something on your mind, please don't hesitate to speak up, but this isn't the place to be calling out individuals as it will only serve to derail the topic. We need to be able to have a respectful discussion for this to have a meaningful impact.

I'll have time to reply properly later but what I'll say for now is that people should be cognizant of the tone they are bringing to this discussion, stop jumping to conclusions from a limited perspective, and treat one another with respect. If you are done with LSRP and think it's a lost cause that's fine but go find something better to do with your time than coming here to drag it down. Many of us still see potential and the purpose of this thread is for the community to work together to find solutions. There will always be differing opinions and as such no one will ever be 100% satisfied but that shouldn't stop us from having a constructive discussion about the best path forward for LSRP. Please stay on topic.

This was originally intended as a response to gyzo's "Can we bring back the old playerbase count?" topic but after I completed the post I felt it was worthy of its own topic. A VISION FOR THE FUTURE: Achieving peak LSRP activity numbers is probably an unrealistic goal given the landscape of the RP scene nowadays, but I do believe there are steps that can be taken to maintain and build upon the current player base. There have been plenty of solid ideas here and elsewhere on the forums that can help bring about positive change in different aspects of LSRP, but my post is going to be focused on the big picture and what all of us can do—players and admins alike—to help LSRP reach its true potential. To touch briefly on why I personally returned to LSRP: it was for Valenti much more so than it was for LSRP or SAMP. In the past, I have publicly voiced my displeasure with LSRP staff. I was very skeptical of the LSRP comeback and thought it was simply a last-ditch marketing gimmick for the GTAV server; I didn’t think it would be successful and had no interest in rejoining until countless Valenti members reached out urging me to reopen the faction. I went through with it and I’m glad I did because the server has exceeded our expectations so far and has allowed us to make a serious comeback as a faction. Upon our return with how accommodating the staff was setting us up with official status and swiftly handling requests, it was the first time since I joined Valenti in 2011 that I felt we were finally getting the respect we deserve as the longest-standing and most renowned faction on the server. Unfortunately, with lengthy delays and several questionable rulings against us recently, this feeling has dissipated to a degree, but I am still of the belief that the staff team is doing a better job than they have in most previous eras. Regardless of player count, LSRP still has major potential and I believe we can make this final era something special if we all work together. CULTURE SHIFT With that said, everyone needs to remember that the admins are volunteers and we need to adjust our expectations accordingly. The admin team makes LSRP possible and we need to be grateful for that. We need to squash this “us vs. them” mentality that drives a wedge between the players and admins, and we all need to start pulling the rope in the same direction. A clear vision for the future needs to be outlined and at the center of that needs to be a cultural shift that brings the community together as one team working towards the common goal of making the best role-play experience possible. LSRP having a smaller player base doesn’t mean the community doesn’t have room to grow and it isn’t something we should dwell on; instead, we need to look at this as a prime opportunity to build the foundation upon which the new era of LSRP can be built. The success of this server has always been a team effort and that will need to be even more pronounced this time around to ensure we have a community that is sustainable and has room to grow. FACTION SCENE The faction scene and the great factions in particular have always been the main driver of LSRP’s success. We are currently in a good spot with several long-standing official factions and some solid new factions on the come-up. This kind of continuity of characters and factions is key to creating an immersive, realistic, cohesive, and sustainable role-play environment. To maintain and improve upon the current state of the faction scene, everyone needs to play their part. To build strong, quality factions, people need to consider joining the existing factions instead of creating new ones. Only those who are experienced and qualified should be making new factions with the intent of filling a gap in the current faction scene, but we need to be cautious not to oversaturate certain genres. Faction leaders need to create factions with purpose and meaning, the average player needs to stay IC and focus on the realistic development of their character, and the admins need to incentivize, reward, and help facilitate quality role-play. The standard for achieving official status needs to remain high and admins shouldn’t feel pressured to lower the bar in order to appease to players out of desperation. High standards for official factions ensures a healthy faction scene and lowering the bar will create for weaker, unsustainable factions, as has been seen in the past. Unofficial factions now have plenty of schemes they can apply for and it’s certainly a good thing to reward good performance and give people the tools they need to role-play, but only the best faction(s) in each genre should represent LSRP as an official faction. On the other hand, toxic factions need to be disciplined, and if improvement isn’t seen in quick order, they need to be shut down. LSRP has been doing a good job with this as of late and I have seen the benefits first-hand in the LCN scene. The description of a long-time official crime family that was notorious for rule breaking and subpar role-play early on in the LSRP comeback set the tone. That faction in particular has since improved and are making positive contributions to the role-play. The recent shutdown of another toxic LCN faction was another step in the right direction. The LCN scene is experiencing one of its better eras right now and that is in large part thanks to LSRP bringing the hammer down on these problematic factions. In order to optimize the faction scene, I would like to suggest a revamp of the Faction Team structure as seen below: Head of Factions and/or Faction Team Council Official faction leaders (1 from each official faction) The most qualified admins and players with ample faction experience Testers/admins who serve the purpose of handling requests in a timely fashion The most notable change is the involvement of the official faction leaders. When LSRP was in its heyday and on an upward trajectory, there wasn’t a massive Faction Team; there was a Head of Factions who consulted the official faction leaders, which worked quite well at the time. The official faction leaders are a highly knowledgeable group and can bring great value to the Faction Team’s decision-making process. Additionally, this ensures all official factions are represented equally in the faction team and limits the potential for corruption. The Faction Team needs to consist of a healthy balance of players experienced in all the major genres. Many players (myself included) have grown increasingly frustrated with their suggestions falling on deaf ears over the years and, as such, don’t speak up like they used to and have no desire to seek out staff positions. LSRP acknowledging this and going out of their way to recruit the most suitable candidates for the Faction Team (and other staff divisions) would go a long way. ROLE-PLAY MINDSET Everyone needs to adopt the mindset of focusing on the realistic development of their characters. Stay in the moment and embrace every scene. The play-to-win mindset, trigger happiness and seeking quick thrills is not the best way to go about role-playing and it drags the server down. LSRP is marketed as a heavy role-play server and we need to back this up. Below I have linked two threads from the old forums related to this topic: (39) [Tutorial] A case for RPing realistically - Los Santos Roleplay (39) Realism + Character Development = Fun = Success - Los Santos Roleplay MARKETING Other posters have already outlined different approaches that can be taken to market the server and I am in agreement that this needs to be a major focus for staff. Aside from this, word of mouth will go a long way in bringing old players back to the server, but we all need to do our part to make the best role-play environment possible in order to lure people back. While I am of the opinion that the staff team has improved, there is still a stigma weighing them down and they need to continue making positive steps to repair their reputation for some players to ever consider a return. The admins also need to recognize the value many of the long-standing official factions bring from a marketing standpoint. Countless players have come through these factions and people who are otherwise disgruntled with LSRP staff can potentially be lured back by the prospect of rejoining their old faction and continuing their character’s story. Remove the red tape and let these historic factions thrive. PLAYER RETENTION Marketing is useless if we can’t retain the players we bring in. Having a strong faction scene will go a long way in attracting and retaining players. On top of this, the community needs to be welcoming and the game needs to be as user-friendly as possible. LSRP does a good job of allowing players to have creative freedom, but there are still plenty of instances of the admin team being overbearing on people’s creativity. Remove unnecessary restrictions and applications; allow players to craft their characters as they see fit within reason. Factions and players who have made mass contributions to the server over the years should especially be given the benefit of the doubt and more leeway. As others have stated, having the current script-based jobs as the main moneymakers for new players won’t cut it. The government needs to have funding available for companies so that money can be earned through actual role-play as opposed to mindlessly farming scripted jobs. I suggest the introduction of a new staff division or a “buddy system” of sorts committed to helping new players learn the ropes not only in regards to the game itself but also how to role-play realistically and develop a character. We need to focus on retaining players who are here to role-play and develop a realistic character. It’s usually quite easy to decipher between someone who is here to role-play and someone who is not. Discipline and ban rulebreakers/toxic players who only serve to disrupt the experience of real role-players; LSRP being lenient with these types of players out of desperation to keep the player count up is counterproductive. Additionally, LSRP needs to be cautious with how much time they put into the GTAV server. I’m not sure if this explains the recent increase in wait times, but the increased focus on GTAV certainly had a damning effect on the SAMP server last time around and history tends to repeat itself. GTAV is covered, but there is clearly still an appetite for SAMP and thankfully LSRP has filled that void for now. Most of us are here because we aren’t interested in GTAV. The SAMP server, in my opinion, should be the top priority; don’t take it for granted. TL;DR Role-play is a collaborative game and people need to stop being so selfish. Take responsibility yourself, regardless of your role on the server, and think about how you can positively contribute to the community. Focus on role-playing and developing your character realistically. We need to come together as one team to create the best role-play experience possible for the success of LSRP going forward.

Usergroup members are reminded to keep up to date with all private forum topics: The Valenti Crime Family - Los Santos Roleplay (ls-rp.com)

Tony's Liquor through the times:

Circa 2020

All usergroup members are reminded to keep up to date with all topics found here: Private Forum - Los Santos Roleplay (ls-rp.com) Thank you to everyone for the continued support.

A welcome addition to the LCN scene. Congratulations.

New private forum topic for all usergroup members to read: Drugs/Firearms Supplier Information - Private Forum - Los Santos Roleplay (ls-rp.com)

Usergroup members are reminded to keep up to date with all topics found here: https://community.ls-rp.com/forums/forum/1019-private-forum/ Thank you to everyone for the continued support.

New private forum post for all usergroup members to read: https://community.ls-rp.com/forums/topic/14086-la-famiglia/?tab=comments#comment-151412

New private forum topic for all usergroup members to read: La Famiglia - Private Forum - Los Santos Roleplay (ls-rp.com)