Mahitto

Unrelated from this topic but yeah lol, if you reaaally wanna put something like that you gotta mask it as being a community leader or something, bringing up video games in a serios manner in real world scenarios is almost always a turn off - job, relationships, family and all. Reddit is the same.

Working in a specific industry can easily 'lock' you in that industry. If you develop games, or gambling software, or porn sites, for example, you're going to have a hard time getting a job at Google or Spotify or Lockheed or your government, for example. It's a more-or-less justified bias that we can't do anything about, a stigma. LS-RP (and RP servers) can easily be associated with gang activity, nazis, rape, torture and the most fucked up shit you can think of and no interviewer cares that it's realistic or just RP or just a video game. The moment you put that on your CV, they look it up and find RP photos of a 2015 gang throwing around the n word, you're pretty much done. Sure, for the right amount of money you can play it off as a side gig or you just being a developer, but if you volunteer for it? Best of luck lol. So best case scenario would be get paid well as a dev for LSRP and not put it on a resume. We've recently had a candidate write something similar on their CV (administrating a game server) which is only a flex on that game server, it just looks quite pathetic from outside. He wasn't denied because of it but it certainly played a role. If you put down that you're administrating an NGO feeding the homeless, or being a volunteer dev for a startup or some student club or whatever, it will probably take much less time and help you way more.

If that's the case then I think that's amazing but also that we have found our problem - people don't know that. All of the statements I made were based on my knowledge and I am very sure that most if not all of the people who left have an equally bad opinion (or worse), as well as not being up to date or misinformed, so our focus should be on highlighting all of this while also targeting the people who left. It should be a very direct and heartfelt message though, not a formal staff announcement. That's my opinion, anyway. I did think of contributing more to the server but not in this current state and I really hope you guys don't blame me (or others for it). Objectively speaking, it's very hard to justify putting time and effort into a pretty much dead project (player-wise). But... if this picks back up again, I'll be one of the first to log in, start characters and businesses, join factions and such. I used to be very into mapping (was a mapper on World). Regarding being a dev, it's more of a personal decision but I have always hated the way devs are treated on GTA RP communities so I wouldn't really do that (unless something changed and please let me know if so). From what I can see, they're looking for people proficient in specific languages/concepts/technologies (so a mid or senior preferably) but are willing to pay... nothing. Now I'm sorry but I already work 9-10 hours at my main job (as a dev) and have a couple of side projects (hoping to turn into startups), so spending the remaining 1-2 hours coding for free (when I could just freelance and be paid, a lot in time) instead of playing or relaxing is really not attractive. And I can't even put it on my resume as I would a normal project as (coming from someone also reviewing resumes) coding a game server (especially for such a niche gamemode) is not a plus in my industry and might even drag you down...

What I meant was that these suggestions weren't listened to at the right time. Timing was very important for a brand new server at opening. People complained about the same 10 things for months, yet nothing was done about them. Since then, almost all of them left and left with a sour taste and a lack of trust. We can bring them back nut it would take a tremendous effort from management and senior staff, from devs, faction leaders and other staff and players as well. I can give suggestions but I can guarantee you nothing will be done about it. If by any chance someone will pick them up, it will take forever and be half-done. There are two big reasons people don't join: - Things take forever to do or are just hard for no reason - people want stuff now, not in weeks and months, especially when we don't have that upper hand. They are complaining about it on World but they do have that upper hand. We don't and we should capitalize on that. If someone wants something, anything, the staff team should be crazy flexible and it should be very easy to get. If I want a business the process should be basic and fast - I post my idea on the forum and by tomorrow I can start it up. If I want to run a scheme, I can have an answer by tonight (which should be a yes, and if there's an issue ways to fix that but still a yes) and start it by tomorrow. If I want to join a faction like PD or some mob, I should be able to do that within a week or two. If I want to start a faction, again, up by tomorrow. We're really not that busy nor in the position to make people wait and impose limits. The economy is an absolute mess, people like some grinding and making easy money so that they can focus on RP. People want guns and drugs and money. - There's nothing to do. Encourage RP, create that hub which was suggested so long ago. Literally takes a few hours to set up a map blip and 5 random stores and promote that as an RP hub. Encourage as many people to start businesses and factions as possible and encourage people to join them rather than AFK or do something else. Why would anyone in their right mind join an empty server so that they can go through a 3-month-long PD academy, take 2 months to start a business, a year to get money for a house and so on. And the answer is they don't, they just stay away. But I can assure you nothing will be done about it (or at least nothing drastic, best case scenario a tweak or two which will do nothing) and people will be back here in a month saying the same thing, "if you want to help just suggest something". And so one until we close.

I personally left the server a few months ago and the reason was 90% the lack of players and things to do (as opposed to World) and 10% the lack of updates (which is not an issue anymore thanks to you guys, so that's a great job in that regard! The lack of management however is still obvious). My friends did the exact same, as RPing at a slightly lower quality with 85 people at a party is much better than amazing quality with 10... If I see the server picking back up and going past 150-200 with lots of factions, businesses etc. then of course I'll get in game, I love LSRP. But if it's the way it is now, with 2 vehicle sales per month, 3 factions and 10 people online? I work full time and in my 2-3 hours of free time I'd like to not just roam an empty map and look for RP (which you do even on GTA World with a playerbase 100 times higher). Ok but what community? The community we have right now is barely a community, it's more like a small group of friends. I honestly do not understand this decision, it's like opening a coffee shop no one steps into in an area full of coffee shops rather than have the most successful coffee shop in the ghetto... But it's not my time or money at the end of the day. I will still stick around and if the server picks back up I'll obviously log in but I can't really do much more than that.

I know about these, I've been on LSRP for close to 10 years now. I've been here during the peak and the fall, then the V peak and the much worse fall we're in now. And no offense but this is the kind of hopeful but baseless speech that was every other post after opening, while people were complaining and leaving. Everyone was saying to "just log in" and "spread the word" yet they either didn't or it failed miserably. I am not implying the server is bound to die, I'm literally observing our progress towards it. What do you think is bound to happen, honestly? We hit 5-10 players online and we bounce to 250? How? And again, no offense but suggesting stuff that will help the server does not do anything. Literally, look over the past few months at how many suggestions there were of things people didn't like yet what happened? Nothing. People didn't like the super hard economy, didn't change. They didn't like tapered paychecks, didn't change. They also didn't like how they couldn't join PD and some other factions as they were full, or create their own, didn't change or did way too late. And so on. People have been complaining and suggesting. We don't see it much nowadays because these suggestions were either left unanswered or turned down and pretty much all of these people have left. There are like 5 of us on this thread and 10 in-game and that's it. If you/we don't even admit this is a very very important turning point, we'll just reach 0 and that's going to be it. It happened with the SAMP server eventually, yet everyone was saying the same things as the playerbase was going down, and they ended up closing the server (and it was not because we were going to V - if it had 500 people online instead of 4 people, it wouldn't have been closed).

Can't an old backup of everything LSRP related be put up then? (a backup of the script, database, forums etc. from before we closed) That way no one needs to work on migrating anything. Sure, 15 people will lose some assets but they'd be irrelevant anyway as the servers are very different.

But do you (as staff members, not necessarily personally) at least have a plan for LS-RP? Because our playerbase has been decreasing continuously ever since we launched and it has not shown any signs of going back up over the long term. And it's not just the way it is - other servers (on both GTA 5 and SAMP or whatever it's called now, not just World and RCRP) are either stable or gaining players as we speak, it's not the community getting older and quitting gaming, it's something we're doing wrong, an edge we don't have etc. But I personally (correct me if I'm wrong please) have not seen any sort of plan against this. I have a few questions I would assume most people here are curious about... - Why are we losing more and more players every day? - What will happen when we'll peak 5-6 players online? We're not far away from that point, especially since this is almost exponential. The more people we have, the more join. The less people we have online, the less will join (or leave) as there's nothing to do. - What about when we'll hit 1-2 players, or 0? - Is anyone doing anything to prevent this from happening? Except for what's currently public and obviously not working (updates, some announcements and events)? - Who's going to be paying for an empty server for months at a time and why? Or are we all just contributing (in various ways) to a community that's going to be closed soon? And if so, why would anyone log in, do 5-10-25 more days of character and faction development just for all of it to be lost?

But if we're honest with ourselves, do you really see either working out? I'm not saying this as an insult or hate but just as observation - with the current state of the server, staff and devs should be buzzing around the forums and grasping at every little bit of feedback they receive - and let's be honest, there's basically none. We have like one active forum topic with replies every other day. Yet barely any staff is here and when they do answer, and again - no hate, just observing - it's always a "can't be done" or "in the works". No one is even acknowledging the player issue. Updates are being rolled out as if we're hitting 500 online a day, staff updates are the same. Look on Discord and see when was the last time you saw anyone address the basically inexistent playerbase - it's just random events and announcing bugs and bug fixes. This should be the number 1 priority yet everyone treats it like it doesn't exist. There were a few people who used to stress about it but unsurprisingly they either left or were kicked out. Do you think that with the current level of involvement (and 0 hype) we'll do anything on SA-MP again? Imagine the server opens tomorrow, or next week - do you think the team has the energy and motivation to actually administrate the server, to come up with brand new ideas, to put in hundreds and thousands of hours like they used to? The only reason LS-RP was so amazing was because of a combination of active and involved staff, and passionate people. Very few actually. Management and devs rolling out updates and rulings, staff always online to help and solve issues, as well as (very important) a group of super passionate players in key positions - faction leaders and business owners. If Roux and Houston and the government guys and such weren't on LS-RP, it would've been a very different experience. I don't think we can find such involved players anymore.

In that case why continue developing a project almost no one is showing interest in? I'm sure you (devs and staff) can see the evolution of the playerbase but unfortunately no one seems to be interested. Unless you're hiding something from us, we're not hitting a record low and bouncing up super high. More and more people are leaving, not joining. I have not been in-game for a while now but I bet you won't see many level < 3-4. If you were to take the entire daily playerbase now and remove all people with a very strong reason to be online (staff position, devs, legal and illegal faction leadership, business owners, super rich players) how many "regular" players would you be left with? That's the real playerbase, unfortunately, which is close to non-existent. Why not start from scratch on SAMP? Get a barebones open-source gamemode (with the basic commands, factions, authentication, jobs etc.) and tweak them, then make it more LSRP and add new features instead of adding more features while the playerbase is decreasing? As @Ronnie2Polez said too though, it was the same situation until the server was closed - in 2020, for example, the server was also running a version to which other devs contributed, many of who left. Regardless, it shouldn't matter. These devs signed up to contribute in a volunteer manner, knowing their work will be used (obviously). You can't contribute to some open source project and years later change your mind. And if you can, that means you're also entitled to a part of the money said project has generated while using your work. But you're not, because that's literally what you signed up to do (volunteer, create software to be used by others). I don't think that argument is valid, I'm sorry.

I do see your point but are we really taking steps back? Especially when RCRP has 300+ players on SAMP with minimal advertising, completely unexpected + when stepping forward for LSPR on this version means putting in a lot more effort for an empty community? Because judging by the numbers we're not going 300->150-80->20->...->1000 players, likely ever (even the other server got close because they sacrificed quality). We've been seeing this for a long time now... "Give it time, we just opened X days/weeks/months(/years soon) ago, it'll pick back up, yet no one is really addressing the low and decreasing playerbase. We're just going on as if we're playing on a normal, stable community while people are still upset - a very low number, because the majority left and is actively leaving... while we're rolling out features, promoting people and factions and hosting events... when was the last announcement tackling this head on? None of it matters if no one is here.

This was a great idea which was not put into practice well. It can be salvaged but a major overhaul of the economy has to happen first.

That's not what I meant - I think youtube videos are the best (and only) way to advertise such a server. I absolutely loved and still do love watching RP videos regardless of the server and there has been a major lack of them. If there's one way to bring the server back, and I honestly think this would be the only way, is to get 4-5 people (at least) to post videos regularly (1-2 times a week and a live stream or so). What I'm against is the traditional form of advertising that they were circulating on the other server - TikTok, paid ads, marketing agencies, some even suggested real-life billboards. These will only cost money and do nothing except make us cringe - look at the text based RP ads on TikTok, they're stupid - either some super unrealistic trailer that looks nothing like the server (then people complain about the randos brought over by a "be whoever you want" action-packed trailer) or 10 minutes of standing around and typing in silence. If you mean youtube videos, I'm all for it.

I don't think it does. Like I was saying in my last reply, the only way V would be great for heavy RP would be with a ton of players. A normal SAMP server with 200 players is a thousand times better than a very fancy V server with the same amount, simply because the map is smaller and you have stuff to do.

I don't blame them - unless they're just parroting what they've heard from devs/others more involved. Of course they'd be very reluctant to switch back to SAMP after putting so much effort into this script + considering how much worse coding a samp server is. However, the "absolutely never" replies without room for discussion I find to be quite stupid, no offense intended. Sure, you'd basically throw away years of work and go back to a much worse scripting experience but the real question here is who cares about this amazing server and script with shiny features if no one wants to play here? An amazing developer experience and great graphics with an empty server. I value graphics and realism in video games and I do think GTA 5 does some things better (like the furniture system, for example) but other things are completely unnecessary for an RP server, or actually hurt the RP. I don't think advertising will do anything for us - people are expecting GTA 6 and games which bring a lot, I highly doubt we'll get any people to be like "Oh, actually I'll set MW2 and Fortnite aside and start studying the theory of heavy text based role-playing to hopefully be admitted on an empty server". At this point it's like creating a brand new cryptocurrency which no one wants to use. Just as a note, I'm not throwing hate around. If I didn't care, I wouldn't be here. I want us to do better but we have to be objective. Simply ignoring the massive issue which is an empty server and just going forward with staff updates and features is a waste of everyone's time in my opinion. The number one priority should be bringing players (back), not a new X system and promoting and demoting Y people into whatever positions. None of that matters if the community is empty. Learn from Romania Roleplay, they were the biggest RP community in Romania back on SAMP and had a very very similar fate on V. They migrated because it was the next big thing, script wasn't ready so it kept being delayed, launched barebones, went from 250ish players at launch to a constant 100, 50, a few months later in the 20s, then down to 10 and they closed it to bring back a brand new server ready to play. That was June 2022 if I remember correctly. The project is dead. They tried to use their SAMP fame, failed, and now they're nowhere. LSRP is in a very similar situation - amazing on SAMP, migrated to V because it was the thing to do, delayed, launched with a barebones script but good momentum, questionable decisions, less and less players. It's just that our momentum was bigger and we're not at the "dead project" state yet but if nothing changes, people won't come back. They won't see update 591.4 and be like "actually". After all, the only thing that's absolutely necessary on any RP server is the community itself. Management, scripts, teams, factions, none of those matter if you have 10 players online. A low player count will drive a lower one, not a higher one. It's not too late to salvage this. And no, it will most likely not be on V. As we both said it and everyone is aware, in order to feel the 300 players RCRP has on SAMP we'd need at least 2000-3000 players online at a time. No V server has ever gotten there, not even the other one which appeals to way more people (because of the RPG stuff).

As a side note, I still don't understand this and I've only seen it here, why are people so afraid to mention other servers. Competition is good. Everyone should be aware of all servers and play where they like it the most, if we're so afraid people will up and leave just because they read four letters and figure out that's a server that's much better than this one... the problem is very different and much worse. I honestly don't understand why they're not at least trying it out. How much more can it be to host the old samp server with 50 or 100 slots and see if that works out? If that's too expensive, lower the requirements of the V server, we don't need 5000 slots. Who cares the development experience and opportunities are much better on GTA 5 if no one is using either? Give it a shot.

He's right though, and people have been saying it all along. They've proved it. 300 players on samp feels like 900 on gta 5. I don't think it would have the same effect though, as the motivations between rcrp reopening on samp (or openmp or whatever it's called now) versus lsrp are different. They're doing it as a passion project while LS-RP feels/felt more like a "have to", unfortunately.

If that was the case, we'd already have them on the server but we don't. That's why this thread exists. These hubs are absolutely necessary to spark some passive, non-faction-oriented role-play and they usually are artificial. On the old server we had the mall - most people went there because of the /ad spot - and idlewood which was the center of south ls, only after people started going there for the social aspects. Even on GTA World, which has a much higher player count and longer history, you don't find social hubs. People just go to the open businesses, with their factions or friends, or just roam around. If you want to do anything else, best of luck. That works when you're not trying to reel people in but when we have 20 players online, we can't afford for the 21st player who's just testing the water to be like 'that's too complicated nevermind'. Just make the /ad spot the same as on samp and give donators the /ad from anywhere perk, or make it so for normal /ads and not business ones. More inconvenient but it's better in this regard.

Yes, it's natural as a server becomes big, you can't have high-quality heavy-rp and 400 people online at the same time. The higher it goes, the lighter the RP. There's a very short supply of people who enjoy this type of gaming - most old ones quit, new ones just don't. Probably 80% of the originals left. GTA World peaked this high because of the Epic Games free GTA V event + the FiveM migration, which is why they have such low quality but even there, it's not that bad, that's why we can learn from them. While I think it's a horrible option in the long run, if you don't get too involved you can have a very complex and very realistic character, good businesses and factions, people to interact with etc. We can't have a super-realistic game and even then, it's boring and people won't enjoy it (LS-RP barely touched on it and look at the enthusiasm). The light, RPG aspects are unrealistic but they are fun. Most people look for fun, a very very small number look for pure realism and having a "small server of excellent RPers" is a horrible idea, like what are you going to do, the server's one gang member will rob the only business and have the one cop responding? Get shot and have the cop change char into their FD character? You need numbers for realism, you won't have realism with 20 people online, half of who are AFK or on-duty staff, and lighter RP with 900 people is way more fun than heavy RP with 10 (mind you, the same 10, in any scenario). LS-RP used to have good RP but it wasn't the most realistic - plenty of weird unrealistic characters, many being high profile, the mall and idlestacks, houses worth tens of millions of dollar, same with guns, making millions in a "savings" account. But that's irrelevant right now, the nitpicking won't fix the server or bring back players. It's not about the scripts or the 2 inactive staff members or whatever other small arguments people might make, we need a real change.

I played here for a good few years back in 2016-2020, had a blast.

I think it's a great example, actually. Why do you think otherwise? Sure, they do a lot of stuff in questionable ways and their RP quality is all over the place, but I've seen way more heavy RP being done there than in most places - and of course, a lot of stupid stuff too - mostly because of how large their community is. The smart thing to do is to copy their success and avoid their mistakes instead of letting personal bias cloud your judgement. After all, what's the point of a perfect but empty heavy RP community? We can 1-1 reality and have the most amazing experience, but what for if there are only 10 people on the whole map? We can't be picky and put up a lot of walls and rules when our peak is so low.

I totally agree with this but we also need a new approach, not the same-old one of a "classic heavy rp text based server". What I mean by this is that we're competing with GTA World and they already have most if not all of the things we want to add, and more. It's like a Xiaomi vs Apple thing at the moment - saying "we have an internet browser" and "we added a calculator app" won't make people leave Apple and buy a Xiaomi. We need a rebrand, but also a different direction. Even with all of the updates (which so many people work hard on) we're still going to be 5% of World, and that's normal considering how many devs and time they've spent on their server in the past few years, but we have to be realistic - if we're the same thing but worse, no one is going to come over or join us instead of them.

I used to play up until a few months ago (on and off for about 1-2 months after open). The main reason I stopped playing was because of the low playerbase and lack of stuff to do. I would log in to around 60-70 players and go trucking. The illegal factions weren't too active, the legal ones (I was interested in) had closed recruitment. There was 1 business open every now and then with very subpar RP - the pit stop in vinewood, I remember going once and seeing $300,000 cars parked in front of a trailer/dive bar with rich guys, gangsters, mobsters and police officers inside, and I understand why but it still just rubbed me the wrong way. Otherwise there was nothing to do. Got DMed a few times, interacted with 2 people, drove around for hours and logged off for good. Since then, I can see it's gotten worse in this regard and I don't understand why. People want tapered paychecks removed, easy fix. Alright, let's introduce a drug system? Fix the car loans. Ok, now you can point with your finger. Why not listen to players? Most of the fixes and features they want aren't even that hard to code and implement.

I do think you guys are doing your best but the problem is obviously not being addressed, as the only few relevant metrics are degrading with every update (factions, player count, interest etc.). There are more developers, more features, teams, activities and responsibilities, opportunities yet the playerbase is not just stagnant but it keeps shrinking - having 10 players online is basically having 0, especially on such a large map. I think the biggest problem is that LSRP doesn't have that hype anymore, so people have no interest to play here anymore. We can put ourselves in the shoes of someone looking for a server, either an experienced player or a brand new one - they might try out LS-RP but at the moment they have 0 reason to be here, considering how much better World is (more and better scripts, more active factions, more players, businesses etc.). I think this is all because we're not doing anything new or 'courageous'. It's the same old scripts and concepts - /me, /do, the same 5 legal factions and 5 illegal factions, same staff teams (you join as a 'tester', become an admin, management etc), same features basically - even if they're slightly different. Why not try something completely different? Lay out a new direction for the community, something that has not been done before, what do you have to lose, the 10 people who mostly AFK online and the 10 more who only join for events? Imagine a server with unlimited money, everything is free (houses, cars, businesses), everyone can get anything right away. I don't think this is a good idea but it's something that has not been done before, so something like that. Use more RPG elements, people like them, but focus on heavy RP - introduce more grindy stuff, let people grind their way to $1m if they want to, but make RP more profitable. Make it super easy to join, create new characters, extremely easy to start a business or factions even if we have 50 factions with 2-3 players. Unless you guys do something and do it quickly, these 10-20 online players will not suddenly go up to 50, 100, 500, 1000. They'll just leave and we'll have a feature-rich super-developer empty server and community. There's no point in heavily regulating everything and everyone if there's no one here. And also, encourage discussions, especially on the forums. Serious discussions about the issues on the server, suggestions, just random stuff about the state of the server. You don't even know how much hype the 'what ifs' can bring. I understand both sides - if your house was just broken into, you're probably still traumatized (on top of the missing stuff) and someone invalidating your experience can absolutely be enraging. On the other hand, though, a person looking forward to the server's launch after it was delayed for the 14th time for various reasons and seeing an update stating the main dev/manager was robbed of everything very close to the next launch can absolutely seem like it was made up, and the reason would be simple to understand - make up a reason for the next delay - it's easy to put ourselves in both of their shoes. However, not just banning but permanently banning someone for questioning you is probably the worst thing you can do as a community leader in such situation. The only thing worse than this is throwing professionalism out of the window altogether and telling them to go fuck themselves. Oh, wait... Regardless, it was definitely not a good move and he doubled down on it, which can (and did) have some pretty obvious effects on how your community will perceive you, management and feedback in general. Who would dare say something negative when the other guy got perma banned for something so petty? That's also why you can see everyone mentioning "the other server" or "left for other servers" and such, even though there's literally one single server every single person knows and probably has an account on - yet everyone is afraid of not "advertising" it and the repercussions. And instead of learning from them (the good stuff, there's a ton of fucked up stuff on world too) we just... don't. Why? I don't know.

I think most of you are completely besides the point, saying "the server is like this because of [insert extremely specific thing or missing feature that only bothers them and 2 others]". No, the server is not empty because there are no shared illegal schemes nor is it because the phone is 2 pixels to the right, or because of some random legal/illegal feud. Adding all of these features might give it a boost in playerbase before it would return to where it is now and ultimately close. Features are not the issue and adding them won't fix anything - you can see that too, they've added plenty of stuff since this summer (which, again, were features asked for just like you're asking for other stuff now). Did the playerbase increase? Temporarily. Now it's closer to 0 than to the old peak numbers. The server is almost peaking 0 and that's solely because of poor mangement. We have a huge staff team - some truly put in effort and care, but most don't - either way they don't make a lot of impact. The ones at the very top make all the difference and they're... not here. There is basically 0 interest from management to keep this going. That's not new though, it's been clear for a long while now - that's why the project has been postponed for years. As a fellow humble dev, it doesn't take that long to create such a barebones script (as it was at launch), especially when you already know most of the features and have already implemented the logic in the samp server. Very little was actually brand new and you can easily code that on your own in less than a year (including getting comfortable with a new programming language and the framework). There's no interest. From the players either - with how bad the playerbase is, that's the only thing people should be talking about, how to get it back up, yet there's one thread and one discussion per week and that's it - and they don't really have any conclusion. The only way this project can succeed is if there's an extremely firm change in attitude, a complete 180, which won't happen. This means mmartin starts giving updates twice a day and puts in multiple hours a day every single day into developing, managing and playing. All other managers and staff hop in game, multiple hours a day, managing the server and role-playing as well. All of the players come back with a fresh perspective and start opening factions and businesses, there's complete transparency and support for any RP whatsoever, no bureaucracy, amazing quality control. Developers start dishing out new features on a daily basis. Factions become active and everyone puts in a ton of effort. Do you think this will happen considering the current state of the server and the general trend over the last few weeks/months/years? I don't. The alternatives are pivoting to another game or gamemode. We have to be objective, living in fantasy-land and saying "oh, I'm still hopeful, let's trust X and Y and wait for update 9.999, that's when they will come back" will do absolutely nothing. If we're objective, there might be a way, but it's unlikely. As it currently stands, there's no reason for anyone to return or start playing here, especially considering they now have multiple alternatives.