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Things the community can do to grow bigger?


Libra

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I was an admin for a server on Conan Exiles and we accidentally killed our server through some bad decisions. One of the lessons I learned is when population is low, you have a choice to make. We had put up an application system when our server hit max population but kept it even while our numbers dropped. 

The application for this server is long (and at times challenging). I think I wrote something like 10 paragraphs before I was done.  And when I missed one part of a question I had to redo the whole thing because it doesn't seem like you can go back and edit it. I did it because the server looks very good and I wanted to do GTA V RP again but I think a lot of people would either quit part way through or if they had to redo it as I did just go "Eh, to hell with it, I'll go play something else."

tl;dr:

High population is the time to be concerned with high quality.
Low population is when you have to make a hard decision about whether or not you need numbers more than you need high quality.

No one wants to see poor spelling and grammar and sub-par RP but if the server numbers are this low I'd shorten the application to a question like "Did you read the rules?" Y/N "Give us an example of your RP (Two paragraphs should do it.)"

 

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No one wants to see poor spelling and grammar and sub-par RP but if the server numbers are this low I'd shorten the application to a question like "Did you read the rules?" Y/N "Give us an example of your RP (Two paragraphs should do it.)"

The server numbers aren't low at the moment and we will not sacrifice quality for quantity, regardless of the number. 

 

The goal is to become the RP server with the highest standards on any platform. The applications, subteams and everything the admin team touches serves that purpose. 

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On 12/30/2018 at 8:48 AM, Atiku said:

This is quite a common complaint, but it's hard to know what the answer would be? Would you like to see more active businesses that encourage people to come RP? A more appropriate 'hotspot' such as Vespucci Beach or do you have something else in mind?

My observation has been that the reason we can have 100+ individuals online but nobody outside is because it's simply too risky to be outside.

 

The server is entirely too adversarial. It seems like every time the server is updated, a good 50-75% of the update is exclusive to the police that make up 10% of the server. With legal organizations making absurd amounts of paycheck money and illegal organizations having a leg up in everything else through the application of violence, playing someone who's part of neither the police nor an illegal organization comes with the distinct impression that your style of play is a mere afterthought or a backdrop compared to these two.

 

Even if the staff punished gangers who roll through Mirror Park and rob every individual they see, and even if the robber is completely in the wrong, the fact of the matter is that your scene has still been disrupted. For every rulebreaking robber that's punished, two more crop up, so why bother with that possibility when you could just RP in an interior instead? That's the logic that turns the server into a ghost town.

 

My advice? Find a way to make locations safe from the idiot who just got his hands on a dufflebag and a sawed-off, and people will roleplay there. How do we do it? Well, I've got two suggestions.

  • Change crime-free zones to expand and contract to certain areas depending on the time of day.
  • A scripted reminder when you're entering and exiting a crime-free zone.

So we end up with something like this: Mirror Park is safe from the hours of 6am to 10pm, and every time someone enters the predefined area during this period, they'd get a notification: "You are now entering a crime-free zone. Be familiar with the rules surrounding them." No more misunderstandings surrounding what is and isn't a crime-free zone, and on top of that you'd have people willing to venture from their properties and actually get to know their neighbors and whatnot.

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9 hours ago, Ethanol said:

The server numbers aren't low at the moment and we will not sacrifice quality for quantity, regardless of the number. 

 

The goal is to become the RP server with the highest standards on any platform. The applications, subteams and everything the admin team touches serves that purpose. 

 

Fair enough. 

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For me, roleplaying is all about the creative opportunity that it's able to fulfill and the fact that it's an almost freeform way to play video games.

I must warn everyone that has read so far to stop reading if you're easily offended or you don't like unpopular opinions since mine's one of those and I'm typing this with a glint of hope that someone will read my post and it won't get deleted (which might happen, because... Unpopular opinion).

I'm "in-and-out" of GTAW because I feel like there's way too much "admin interaction", what I mean with that is that the server sometimes feels like you can't go anywhere without knowing ( in a friendly manner) an admin and what is justified as push to quality RP sometimes feels like it's just an excuse to enforce parameters that are not present in the rules but rather inside someone's head. And that's not the only instance that I found of too much "admin interaction", per example, in order to get a supply of weapons in this server you have to contact an admin to do it and they will evaluate if you're /deserving/ of this, this method favors favoritism instead of merit/quality RP. The answer to that last problem is going to be "But that's to ensure to not have weapons everywhere and to reward quality RP" which can be countered by various psychological/psychiatric studies that prove that favoritism is something that a human being can't really erase completely because his/her POV will always be his/her own and not everyone's else. 

 

What can we change?

We can create methods that involve roleplay and within limits (per exe with weapons: Only X weapons per faction and Y overall that week/month) and also to create / edit a thread in order to explain the player base what's the overall vision for the server because that's a gray area that's not clear at all which leads players to feel like they don't have a voice / an opportunity to RP things that they want because they will be rejected by the admin team. I've had several players tell me that they had plans for characters, business ideas, factions that they're afraid to even start because they "know" that it will be rejected by the admin team. 

With the current climate, you pretty much need admin interaction on a daily basis if you're to do something "big" and there's a set of "hidden" rules that are enforced because "roleplay standards" but the question that remains in everyone's mind is "What standards?" because at the moment, it feels like to regular players that it differs from admin to admin.

 

Why does this matter?

This would help the player count to stabilize because in order to create a community we need to be a place that welcomes people and is warm towards them, which I'm afraid we don't have. Because of the huge gray area and the constant need to have admin interactions people feel like they're getting cheated at, that they're just there to fulfill the roleplay of someone's else rather than to create roleplay, to enjoy the most freeform type of game that's roleplaying within a video game. At the moment, I feel like what cripples the server the most if the fact that most people feel like they're playing for someone's else fun.

This is not the only thing that leads to that feeling, things like: Open sexism in disc/forum; Nazi symbology in people's signatures; Open homophobic comments made by the staff team ; Open racism in forum and disc; The fact that PD gets 95% of updates (which leads people to think that they only happen because @Nervous is the chief of the PD and that the rest of the players are an afterthought).

I might just be old and stuff but I think that "memes" and being funny shouldn't pass as Homophobia, Nazism, Racism, Sexism or overall rudeness towards a group of people. They're supposed to be disruptive and I get that, but disruptive comments make people feel attacked which leads them not staying. Sadly this community doesn't feel like a community but rather various cliques of people that play in the same place but don't actually interact or want to interact with each other. When someone new drops into this reality the only thing that they feel is that they're left aside and that they don't have anything to do and can't do that much without the help of the cliques, they get bored and also leave.

This is a prickly question, but I feel like first, we need to talk about what the admin team wants for the server instead of random enforcing of things and that people are not afraid of speaking their mind.

 

Thank you for your time,

 

P.S: About that last point, as I showed this post to a friend on disc I was warned to not post it because I will get on "the bad side" of the admin team, which is part of the problem that I spoke above. The player base is afraid of speaking their mind because they feel like they need to be accepted by the admin team. 

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46 minutes ago, AkaTenshi said:

-Snip-

 

 

I'm glad you've bought a few of these things up because you've mentioned a few common misconceptions which I'd like to address. 

 

As far as your first point about weapons go, you can get weapons off of other players, however, we need a system to inject weapons into the economy, for several reasons including making sure that we don't have an over-supply and that good roleplay is conducted by deserving factions around weapons (and drugs) these suppliers are chosen. However, it isn't like the admin team hand picks their friends, every faction has the ability to apply and get chosen on their merits. To your final point about favouritism, it's clear you can't remove bias totally in any system, however, it can be reduced and by having multiple people weigh in on each supplier application we aim to do this. I don't feel that this has restricted the player base in any way.

 

To your comments about the staff team making homophobic comments and there being racist signatures, it would be appreciated if you can report these. I only know of one case where a player had a Nazi symbol in their signature and they were banned.

 

Nervous isn't the head of PD (I don't know where this came from?) and in terms of development time spent the PD does not have 95% of the updates, the PD has received quite a few bug fixes recently as they've been reported to us, but they've only received a couple of major additions. Most of these large additions, such as K9 and rubber bullets have come about due to us adding features for players (airsoft and pets) which can easily be adapted to give the PD more features. If you look at the last four updates I don't think they favour the PD and as I said above, any PD updates are mostly smaller fixes that take minimum development time.

 

The majority of the development work at the moment has been going into a few very large features that aren't aimed at the PD and will hopefully be released soon. 

 

I'm sad that you feel the community has become very "cliquey", while there will be cliques in every community (it's pretty unavoidable that people will want to play with their friends more than people they don't know), the new player experience and helping new players when they interact with us across the platforms discord/forums/IG is heavily emphasised in the staff team and I'll make sure to take this advice on board when we look at more things we can do to be accommodating. 

 

As far as our plans for 2019 and what we as a staff team expect, this has been a hot topic recently and we currently have plans to make posts about these this month, both for our own staff team but more importantly externally to the rest of the community. 

 

I hope this post has helped alleviate some of your concerns, though I don't share all of your concerns and opinions we certainly do value a different perspective and management has tried very hard to be as open and transparent as possible with our players and staff team. 

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I'm going to touch on the specific question.  

 

Don't force things, play the server to enjoy it. Don't focus on the player base growing, as time passes and the server continues to be developed and promoted, the player base will grow. Servers in the past have become successful due to pure patience. Another thing I would like to touch on and disagree with, is, the application process. It's not appealing to a player who just wants to play a game, who wants to go through a 20 minutes application just to role-play? An application should just be to make sure you have basic English skills, RP understanding and rule understanding. You shouldn't administrate and judge people on their role-playing ability via an application stage, it should all be done in-game. 

 

 

 

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12 minutes ago, NathanC said:

I'm going to touch on the specific question.  

 

Don't force things, play the server to enjoy it. Don't focus on the player base growing, as time passes and the server continues to be developed and promoted, the player base will grow. Servers in the past have become successful due to pure patience. Another thing I would like to touch on and disagree with, is, the application process. It's not appealing to a player who just wants to play a game, who wants to go through a 20 minutes application just to role-play? An application should just be to make sure you have basic English skills, RP understanding and rule understanding. You shouldn't administrate and judge people on their role-playing ability via an application stage, it should all be done in-game. 

 

 

 

Agree on the first part, not so much on the second.

If you saw it from the staff's side doing the application you'd understand why so many were denied... They literally have to put up with incredible amounts of hostility from people they deny (Talking from experience).

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4 minutes ago, Mahiko said:

Agree on the first part, not so much on the second.

If you saw it from the staff's side doing the application you'd understand why so many were denied... They literally have to put up with incredible amounts of hostility from people they deny (Talking from experience).

 

I understand why applications might be denied, hostility being one of them, but that's a legit reason to deny someone. But, the application process isn't appealing to the new player. If they understand basic English, role-play standards and rule they shouldn't be denied, they shouldn't be held back. 

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1 minute ago, NathanC said:

 

I understand why applications might be denied, hostility being one of them, but that's a legit reason to deny someone. But, the application process isn't appealing to the new player. If they understand basic English, role-play standards and rule they shouldn't be denied, they shouldn't be held back. 

Honestly, I think they're doing fine. Else we'll end up with an LSRP v2 with an incredibly low standard of RP from a server that requires whitelisting.

Instead of making it easier, perhaps make some educational youtube videos for the ones that are being denied that they could watch.

RP Basics, rule basics, driving and whatnot.

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