[Nebula]

we hit 60/68 players a few days ago. Not bad at all.

That's because a troll streamer invited his whole twitch chat to join him

No it wasn't when lost1nplace trolled it was after

That was because some of the followers tried it Out for a bit But left at max 1 hour after

[Soviethooves]

we hit 60/68 players a few days ago. Not bad at all.

That's because a troll streamer invited his whole twitch chat to join him

No it wasn't when lost1nplace trolled it was after

That was because some of the followers tried it Out for a bit But left at max 1 hour after

Actually it seems a few are sticking around. I even had someone get in our TS to get some help downloading the content.

[Quantum]

A better map would help stabilization. At the moment, any population over 30 makes the FPS extremely low and not playable, at least within comfortable bounds.

#NeedRockfordNow

[Dick]

Everything written below is written from MY OWN view point and the way I currently see it. I do not mean to harm or offend anyone with anything written below.

---

The way I see it, Garry's Mod has been out for since around 2004. It is still a massively popular game however in recent years it has especially been slowly dying out - especially from new or customized gamemodes. With CityRP itself, it has been out since 2008 when it was revamped and edited with many, many developers and contributors. The gamemode is always changing and if you looked at the gamemode from 2008 and now in 2017, it is defiantly a completely different game type than what it use to be.

Just going to poke that out here now and say that a few people are in the works of finishing their exams (Should completely end around 1-2 weeks time) and actually finding jobs, so they might be distracted in doing them tasks.

When talking about the recent player count, there have been many things that can be the cause of this. In the past we have had issues with the US server due to the map creator. When the time game, the Map Creator of Rockford wasn't the greatest in how he updated his maps and in a form of a way, the communication between the community had kinda disappeared into non-exist. The decline of major US players had began and a lot of the US players that we have left the community from my own knowledge due to the amount of Ping and FPS they'd receive on the EU servers. When this was sorted the US community was nearly destroyed already and I believe that this was the issue with the US server and what happened with the constant player base we had on that server.

With recent times, I believe the lack of development before the recent promotions and announcements might have drawn the attention from players away especially after the discussions spoken around in the discussion thread that was made a few months back. The development now has defiantly gotten more stable especially with the recent promotions and pokes of hints to as what the next major update patch will be. If the players that have recently disappeared come back to the community, they might get more engaged again within the newest updates that have been provided.

I personally believe there is a slight lack of support, gamemode wise with supporting new players. There has been a discussion and suggestion before on this and sorting this kind of issue.

The topics upon what @Jono spoke about with the over excessive set of rules and the way speaking to others in the community is done can become a much larger factor to what the community has slowly come to. With the recent news of the Media team and the supporting factors of that kind of media promotion is defiantly something to enlighten us with as it could help support the community in being highlighted again.

[Marvin Hampton]

I think the community just needs a little more... community. It has been mentioned previously on this thread, however, I feel it's a major factor which could be addressed. The community isn't full of the fun and banter it once was, I mean yeah you have the odd occasion in the game but that isn't always the case. Things like the EvoCity Radio which in its prime brought the community together with the ability to listen to members of the community have conversations and even trigger mini events. Efest, remember that? 

We need an implementation of something fresh, like maybe a map change and additions and renewals of things that keep the community together. We were tempted with the EvoBank, it never came, the Stock Exchange died and so did the radio. These instances are significant factors which make a player feel unvalued and unheard.

[Fly]

Radio needs to come back, even if it's only going to be playing "I'm Blue" all the f*cking time again.

[Klinex]

I have recently stopped coming on the servers so often. Why?

Boredom.

There is such little to do in terms of gaining money and since no one participates in RP's, it's hard to Passive RP too.

There's all of this and the fact that im currently in search for a job.

[Notinuse123321123]

I can speak for myselves:

I've had a long break from the servers (pre only-rockford) for a couple of reasons:

1.
I was sick of how the arrests, jailtime and police-depth worked.

I was tired of getting max penalty (15 minutes) for saying "fuck you" to an officer, and the fact that they can throw you in jail fo the same penalty as mass-murder would be, is just annoying.
Especially with NO roleplay in jails.

And when I say "depth" within the police-job, I mainly look at how it is done.
If someone say "That man robbed me", the would run over to me, search me, find nothing and either a) Arrest me based on victims statement, or 2) Say sorry and leave.

I have experienced that "popular players", (the most active ones, and the ones who group themselves together) has a highly increased chance of suddenly turning "corrupt" and just arrest by statements when their friend is reporting something.

This takes away the whole trust and integrity you have as a suspect.

There is also alot of arrests based on laws that is not even mentioned in the lawbook, just made up at the spot.

The fact that they don't even want to try to roleplay as forexample look around after a gun that was dropped (and instead just say "you had a gun" and arrest you), take fingerprints, a good ol' question-round on where you were at that given moment, is almost gone.

Many officers seem to "stressed" to actually roleplay as a cop, and enjoy just getting done with it when something happends.

Probable solution:
a) Whitelist.
I played on perp for a while when having a break, and they roled out a full whitelist which tooks a couple of days, with a staff-team that took complaints, investigated it, and banned people from government if they were random-arresting or not roleplaying correctly.
b) Require a jailguard for sentences over 10 minutes as the good ol' days.
c) Have some kind of roleplay the jails.

This is, as stated, my own opinion.
But I have met several previously active players on perp, and they all mentioned these points as one of the reasons they left.
Take it as critics or leave it as this is my "forwarding".

2)
When someone roleplays, opens a shop, concert or whatnot, not many people actually even look at the place.

I have seen this especially at rockford, shops stay empty for hours before the owner just deletes it all.
(Especially as receiving a REP, or a "good job with that RP!" almost require some kind of interaction between players.)

Too many people group together with contras and whatnot, leaving storeowners and passive roleplayers all alone.

This, combined with too much aggressive roleplay, doesn't make me nor many else want to use an hour to build a unique store/roleplay and risk having 1 for hours.


3.
Add a system where dealers (gundealers, bmd, doctors and so forth) actually have to make a store to be able to do their job.

This would make use of the commercial buildings in the city, even add possibilities for delivery-jobs for other players as delivery would be a perc for the store.

Remove the "craft" from f1-menu, add crafting stations (like workbenches, stoves and so forth) that would have to be pressed E on to craft things.

Force people to actually build a business, rather than running around painting cars and spawning weapons out of their pocket.

4.
More jobs.

I have met several new players that does not want to be the "seller-type" their first hours on the server.
I think that adding a truck/delivery-job, (with semi-trucks as rockford is big enough) forexample would be a good addition, as people could drive things around passively, instead of only earning money selling things, which could be hard.

5.
Somehow make taxies, chefs, bus-drivers attractive again.

People rarely use taxis because almost everyone got atleast 3 cars.
People rarely needs a chef, as many people just fish their own food.
Same with busdriver.

Maybe add a cellphone instead of /pm and so forth, less metagaming and so forth.


This is atleast my points, we need something to attract new players, show them that this is a "world in motion", more immersive, not just a plain "jump in and out" "type of RP"-server.

Maybe the staff should take a little trip to the perp-servers and just try certain things there, just to see how immersive things can become if you want it/get the ideas.

[Soviethooves]

That’s a whole lot of truth Vodka. Well done.

[Jokhah]

I mostly agree with what WillyVodka said. (hilarious name)

Here is my two cents.

Its debatable that the community is dying. The population is generally low to zero during my play time. However, here are some things that happen or have happened that cause issues with some people.

1: Server rules: Some of them are followed, some aren't. This applies to users and staff. Recently, it's been Images, Avatars, and Signatures rule 6: you must get permission from the other user prior to posting steam conversations. Game Rule 3.1: Need RP reason to perform actions, especially harmful ones... Is completely subjective at this point. There is no requirement to establish a reason to raid, as your RP reason can simply be your job title. This leaves to a lot of new players to the wolves.

2: Player discrimination: Yeah, I said it. Players are discriminating against other players they do not like. This happens both on the forums and in game, clear as day. This activity is costing you new players, as older cliques tend to gang up on individuals.

3: Toxic Behavior: Players here generally aren't much better than the guys you find on DarkRP when it comes to this. Stuff like talking massive trash to others in the OOC. Victim blaming. Talking trash about religions, races, and creeds. Usually, the victim is treated like complete crap and the staff tend to not get involved, saying stuff like "I don't have time for this, make a player report if you feel like there is a rule violation," when they could just go directly tell the person to stop doing what they are doing. Worst still, you have players who spend their time baiting people into breaking the rules, so they can report them. This happens more often when they predict that the victim isn't recording, because they know the staff here all but refuses to do any actual investigation into the subject if the victim doesn't have a full HD streaming video of it, even though a good bit of the time the logs are more than enough to settle the matter.

4: Biased behavior: Some players turn a blind eye to rule violations when the person is their friend, yet will report everything someone they don't know or don't like does. This ranges from picking up and slamming ragdolls, CDM, RDM, NLR, mostly.

5: Lack of Balance: Some classes or RP styles are glorified, where others are left near lifeless. The government has tons of updates, tools, abilities, commands, skins. Criminals aren't actually required to RP, they just set job and raid, mug, kill, and even cause chases with excuses rather than reasons. Action RP players are glorified while the Detailed RP players are just told to shut up and deal with everything that happens to them. The shop classes all need work. The remaining jobs are near lifeless. The chef is completely invalidated with the way fish are 100% better than anything the chef can sell. Cheffuer is just some special cars that I can tell. Secretary is just the pass guy. BMD has items with zero purpose or value.

6: Crashing: When I play on the server, whatever combination of addons you are using causes odd system based "lag" (as in computer slow downs) and during this event, an instant game crash (game closes without warning) occurs around 30% of the time. There are very few other gamemodes with this issue, even when the run lighting mods, cars, helicopters, vapes, lamps... I dunno what is causing it nor why, because it just closes without warning. I see disconnects of players on the server for reasons other than Player banned or user disconnected, far to frequently.

7: The Rockford Map: It's not entirely common. A lot of first timers will attempt to join repeatedly, only to be disconnected for not having the map. While this is easy enough for a person who actually cares to fix, making them care simply to come on and check things out isn't easy enough to do. A more "common" map or one that auto-downloads from the steam workshop would be a much easier solution.

8: CityRP 2 subgroup: Commonly, CityRP 2 appears pretty far down the list when checking the gmod-internet servers to join. That and it only lists one server in that tab. While it's awesome that you want to stand alone, it's not helping you find players when you are that low on the totem pole, under even Five Nights at Freddies RP, averagely. My stepson is legitimately autistic and I allow him to play on my account (he's 10 and doesn't own a computer yet) and when I tried to show him the server on the list he said, "No, I don't want to play that, it only has a few people." I told him this place was awesome, with guns and cars, lights and sirens (which he loves all of those) and he decided to look at it. Shortly into it, he complained that he can't figure out what he is supposed to do, that the game was boring, and that the rules are hard for him to understand, so he left. I've seen this same kid play on Roblox RP, Minecraft RP, Borderlands 2 he likes to RP with people, but when he said THIS was more boring then his Roblox Highschool RP server (which has next to zero things to do other than talk or ride skateboards) it kinda made me feel bad, but also shed light on some issues.

9: Elitism: Don't know if anyone here doesn't know what I'm talking about with this. Basically, there is this air about the place. The people (some) believe that this gamemode is superior to others (Ex: DarkRP, Fearless City RP) when those same others generally have the same if not more things to do. Making claims like that but obviously being generally equal to most of the other RP modes, makes the community look like either a joke, or a hell hole, take your pick.

10: The staff: Some of you are great, some of you are non-existent, and some of you are very arrogant. I've watched some of the ABRs be declined even though violations were clear as day. I've seen PRs where the clan leader of the accused, is the responding staff member. This happens every now and then, but should a clan mate or known friend of the accused even be allowed to respond to the request? Even when you try to not be biased, you are. The only way to not be biased, realistically, is to not have association with either party.

11: Staff backed clans: If you watch how things play out, RPPs, and staff nominations typically involve those close to the staff. The barely known guy over there, even if he's RPing his ass off and following rules the letter, has a large chance to receive nothing for his efforts, where people closer to the staff tend to get RPPs for seemingly walking across the street and doing a few /me commands. This is even worse for people that the community views in a negative way, like me (not that I give one fuck about RPPs, honestly the RPP related content isn't even that worthwhile to me.) This is without people talking shit about clans like FI simply because it's nearly the "staff breakroom." Its like we learned nothing from Fearless RP and the staff backed clan situation over there.

12: The forums: Generally, they aren't bad with one completely huge exception. Censoring everyone that says something you don't like. For instance, the memeteam. While I'm not a member of that team (lol member of a forum team), they are generally targeted people. People who say things that others don't like about one religion is punished, where others can talk shit about other religions without repercussions. I honestly don't care what god you believe in, do not talk shit about one and defend the other with administrative actions, and try to say you guys are "a community of acceptance." Those two ideas are far from hand in hand. Just like I was told that I was free to express my opinion, then told that I cannot express my opinion because someone else didn't like it. Which is it? I'm free to express myself or I'm not free to express myself? The staff response will be "so long as it doesn't offend." This is also a complete lie, because if the word Jesus offended me and I reported it for such, I would receive a warning for abusing the report system. The truth is, I'm free to express my opinion as long as I put just enough sugar on it so as not to hurt your feelings when I give you raw honesty.


I'm not saying that everything I said is 100% accurate for everyone, but this is what I have experienced here so far. Since I have experienced it, I'm quite sure others have too. My favorite though, is being accused of trolling and having my comment / vote removed from a suggestion thread, simply because you feel like I'm trolling. Your opinion on what you think I'm doing, doesn't make it fact. Even worse is when I have to continue to explain myself, only to be ignored every single time, then people want to ask "why you such a dick, Jokhah." My response is "I guess I am what I eat," because I don't put up with bullshit.

Just my two cents with a few extra dollars worth added on.