Sal

Hi everyone, yes I'm back, how exciting. Before diving into the obvious purpose of this post, let me briefly touch on what I'll be focusing on in my new role. The leadership team has brought me on board as Head of Project to provide strategic direction to LS-RP, both for our RageMP server and the upcoming relaunch of our SA-MP server. I’m already knee-deep in planning on a variety of topics and can't wait to start putting things into action. During my previous tenure I was heavily involved in Communications, often leading our community meetings; and I'll be picking these up again. I also played a key role in revising how our systems enhance the player experience, such as the changes to Company schemes, pushing for the introduction of the /startshift feature, and all sorts of background calculations to ensure that businesses were well-supported. Ultimately I was only providing advisory support back then; but this time I'm in the leadership team and able to really keep things moving in a positive direction. Moving forward, I will be determining our development roadmap priorities and working closely with all sub-teams to ensure that our systems, schemes, and overall server management deliver the best possible experience. I’m open to making necessary adjustments; whether it's tweaking features, overhauling systems, or revamping schemes to ensure everything works better for everyone. But enough about me - this is about you. Entirely about you, in fact. I’m brimming with ideas, but your input is invaluable and will help to shape our direction. That’s why I’m inviting you to spend about 10 minutes to fill out a survey. Your feedback is crucial, and to make it worth your while, three lucky random participants will win a £20 Amazon voucher (or the equivalent in your local currency). So please, share your thoughts with me. Here's the link to the survey. Whether you play actively right now, started to play and then left, or are completely new to the community, your input would be much appreciated. Let's make LS-RP the best it can be.

So your old character and their assets will still exist, including any cars or property ownerships or what-not. The old forum actually exists at the moment in read-only format, but moving forward, we'll be porting relevant topics over to this forum for SAMP. To clarify: not everything, just what's needed to keep things operational moving forward.

haggis

back to the masses I go

yes

I see your points. As someone who hasn't had to A) report anyone recently nor B) deal with any actual reports, my perspective is obviously pretty limited. But here's my take: If this were a court of law and we treated player reports as such, then yes, there's a strong argument that "all reports, no matter who they come from, should go through a strict procedure which does not take into account their status as staff members". In this way, equality is very obvious and so on and so forth, all the points you mentioned previously are valid. In practise however I imagine that the actual act of dealing with these issues is incredibly long-winded - looking at previous player reports there's a hell of a lot of forum back-and-forth which can stretch out over days/weeks and even then, seem unresolved. Again, I speak obviously as someone who hasn't had to deal with this before. If the individual bringing the 'case' towards an allegedly 'offending' player is a staff member however, there is an intrinsic amount of trust that's already been given to that staff member by management purely from holding the position in the first place. In other words, there is some implicit trust that the staff individual is less likely to come forth with a sense of bias, because if they were ever found to be lying or in breach, they would be jeopardising their position. Plus, they have earned trust in the first place by being granted the position. In this way, there is a sort of "class divide" from a trust perspective. But it is also true as ever it has been in the past that there will have been some staff members who may have abused this privilege, or felt themselves 'above' things. I don't think this is right either, and as you say, a way of seeing whether this happens is for the entire process to take place in Report a Player. So that is one potential solution, but I think from a practical perspective, it would basically slow everything down. This is one of the reasons why forum court-based RP has never appealed to me: it's too longwinded and it takes ages to get to the actual point. If some cases can be resolved privately, then so be it. But is that right? I'm not sure. Tldr: I'm a bit on a fence about this and can see where you're coming from, but can also see why it's been done the way it is too.

And we're done here I believe. It's a shame really - but at the end of the day, this thread and any thread in general discussions is for exactly that: a discussion. Discussions can get heated, emotional and so on and this is fine and to be expected. It's also why anything which critiques the server or its scripts or decisions isn't hidden or deleted; it's things we need to see to help things get better. However, when they become personal attacks on other players or groups of players, this is where the issue lies. If you believe that someone has wronged you in some way then they should be reported - there's information on that here: When individuals or groups are named and referenced directly, arguments ensue, and this is the General Discussions forum not the General Arguments forum. Lockin' up here.

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

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

I think everyone's got a point here. Here's my take: 1. Yes we should try to encourage RP hubs so that there's at least one or two reliable 'casual RP' places which aren't so reliant on business openings. 2. One way of doing this, as suggested, is to move some businesses closer together and perhaps remove some of the other ones. This is something Dos Santos and I have talked about before and the odds are we'll end up doing it. 3. In addition to the above, we had the idea of trying to actively manage some of the businesses; having clerks in 24/7s and gas stations and so on. This would be reliant on some sort of shift/job feature which, is on the to do list. 4. Support factions as much as we can and provide them with whatever they need to make an area appealing to their type of roleplay - such as allowing outdoor furniture items. This approach can also be combined with the above, if the factions are happy having other businesses near their hub. Having it all happen 'naturally' and without intervention is the ideal, but I think a jumpstart is needed, even if it's not one that's sustained or managed for very long just to see what happens. A key consideration would be whether any of the hubs be considered 'safe zones' or what-not. I'd argue not in the beginning, let chaos reign.

ye boi

Welcome back sir, welcome back.

shit third. also congrats!