Transparency

Don't think one of the key 'issues' with RPUk is transparency. It's the general mentality of a large handful of players, at least from what I've seen over my years on RPUK.

We, as players, aren't the most friendly players towards baldies, seemingly treating them like they ain't worth more than the clothing they wear. If you just joined a server and got treated like you're worth nothing, punched, threatened with a gun, etc., would you stay on the server? I know I wouldn't.
People treat guns like they're a key component to RP, and losing them would shut down the entire RP. Some of the most fun I've had on FiveM is without guns. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a gunfight every so often, but when every gang member and their baldie squadron carries a firearm while selling weed, then it becomes too much and simply not fun even to play.

So, while transparency might seem like an issue, and I'm not saying it is or isn't, then we, the playerbase, also need to look towards ourselves. People start beefing over minor things, and seemingly just because they're bored. Just use the gang war over some fish. Like, really? At the end of the day, it's the playerbase that helps build a community people enjoy playing. Yes, the playerbase includes everyone, no matter their current role within the community, but while the staff/dev team isn't perfect, neither is the rest of the players.
Some of us have spent close to 7+ years, myself included, on this community. The only reason I've stuck with the community for so long is the people I've met. I'll happily use @Tokjat, @Tobias Gzeeman, Bing Bar, etc., as examples.

While a roadmap, depending on who you ask, might help with transparency, people would always want more and more transparency. At what point do we hit the limit? When the players can see what's being discussed by the staff team? Heck, even the dev team? Don't get me wrong, I personally think development has felt stagnant until recently. I'm happy to see a good stream of updates as of late, even though some, clearly, haven't been taken on well. But I'm still confident and hopeful, the developers are busy working on new things for the community, and are excited to unveil them.
I, like the rest of you, don't know when updates will drop, and can understand the disappointment. But, while updates are fun, they ain't a key component in roleplay. That's the mentality of the players.

This is my opinion, and not a staff one.

Nikolai said:

i'm curious on what "in city jobs" you're specifically talking about here?

I might have some insight on some of it since the amount of "staff jobs" in city are like, 2-3?

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The only one i know of is LSair and in the past i've contacted Kyle and Violet a few time's regarding it and it just seemed like they had quite a bit on their plate as i'd been told before only goverment employee's could work at LSair when me and some friends had enquiered about the LSAir job to help with the lessons and such as there was a bit of a waitlist, but that was more then a year ago so might be different now? I'd also heard before that the c.o.c was run by staff which from what i heard is a list of never ending requests haha. (but obviously i understand coc is not something you'd hand to non staff.) I didn't mean jobs really as full on job titles but more like jobs/any tasks if that make's sense, I'm not staff so i woudn't know what excactly if anything at all we could help with. (i did apply for staff in the past but i'm not sure if i'd be the best fit anyways haha)

I also didn't mean it as in ''they are being overworked'' but as english is my second languague and reading my text again today i can see how i kind of worded that a bit... unlucky.. *hides*
I meant it more as they seem to be very busy every time i see them, and i hope they still have time to enjoy their roleplay as much as they can, and if they are a bit too busy maybi we can help? is more what i meant (sorry probs shoudn't write forum posts at 00:44 my time)

Anne McGee said:

The only one i know of is LSair and in the past i've contacted Kyle and Violet a few time's regarding it and it just seemed like they had quite a bit on their plate as i'd been told before only goverment employee's could work at LSair when me and some friends had enquiered about the LSAir job to help with the lessons and such as there was a bit of a waitlist, but that was more then a year ago so might be different now? I'd also heard before that the c.o.c was run by staff which from what i heard is a list of never ending requests haha. (but obviously i understand coc is not something you'd hand to non staff.) I didn't mean jobs really as full on job titles but more like jobs/any tasks if that make's sense, I'm not staff so i woudn't know what excactly if anything at all we could help with. (i did apply for staff in the past but i'm not sure if i'd be the best fit anyways haha)

I also didn't mean it as in ''they are being overworked'' but as english is my second languague and reading my text again today i can see how i kind of worded that a bit... unlucky.. *hides*
I meant it more as they seem to be very busy every time i see them, and i hope they still have time to enjoy their roleplay as much as they can, and if they are a bit too busy maybi we can help? is more what i meant (sorry probs shoudn't write forum posts at 00:44 my time)

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both LS Air and CoC(since those are the two mentioned) are run on a "do it when you can/want" rather than "you need to to this much", more so they can do other things and prioritise more important staff work compared to CoC, or simply just RP being homeless if that's what they want

I run/own both CoC/LS Air for those higher than I, so i can inquire about opening atleast up LS Air if anything, but it would also require some work internally prior

Nikolai said:

both LS Air and CoC(since those are the two mentioned) are run on a "do it when you can/want" rather than "you need to to this much", more so they can do other things and prioritise more important staff work compared to CoC, or simply just RP being homeless if that's what they want

I run/own both CoC/LS Air for those higher than I, so i can inquire about opening atleast up LS Air if anything, but it would also require some work internally prior

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ah thank you for taking the time to explain that to me, happy they can be the happy hobo's if they wish to be!

Nikolai said:

i can inquire about opening atleast up LS Air if anything

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Yes...let McGee work and help the City by directly selling one of the many things he's afraid of

I mean, you could hold on the swearing as I'm sure they don't find it nice, but +1. I've always wondered "do management not realise that if they implement more crim shit, less gatekeeping, they'd receive more donos and make more money" but it seems this server is a passion project rather than a way to make some extra income. I also don't know the laws the UK has relating to this stuff and all that tax shit. TBJ, base this server in Dubai bro, be tax exempt narsaye!

+1 been a member of this community for almost 11 years now. First game I ever played on PC was arma on ALUK, Server was my home away from home and saw me through some tough times, back in the day transparency was 1000x more and even in the early days of fivem on here the server had that spark that kept us coming back. Server queues of 100+ on the 300 slots server and its just went downhill. False promises, Some Dissapointing updates that just make it more of a chore to log on and try and enjoy yourself. Dont get me wrong some of the updates have been fantastic and brough some much needed life back here but the past 2 years in particular it just feels like we are prolonging the inevitable. Not to mention people who get huge fucking egos when they get a rank ingame or a different colored nametag.

Its not all the servers fault alot of it has gone the route of arma that it will just eventually turn into an Altis Life with Shite RP. Constant Gunplay and then the community will just leave. From someone who has mostly cop mained for the past 5 years I see issues in every faction and gang in the server police included and i just dont see a way out of this hole we are in. Granted the devs work for free and what they do manage to get done outside of their own lives and jobs its extrodianary how they have kept it up so long with the amount of negativity shot their way but the community needs more or there isnt going to be one left. i pride this server on its uniqueness to not just copy and follow other paths most servers go but christ some servers with a dev team of 1 start up and have 10x the amount of things to do for all roles across the server.

Aint shitting on the devs or staff you do bare bits and Im thankful but these promises we have had for years now with barely any implementation is just getting silly. OP is correct here in that we need an actual roadmap and transparency instead of fake promises so we can actually have a reason to be excited and want to spend our free time here. We all log on to have fun, we all want this community to last another 10+ years and not just fizzle out as a greyed out memory.

Community meetings and suggestions that can actually be given a second thought would be a good start. Majority votes for what we actually want in the server so the community can actually show its wants also.

Again not trying to shit on anything the staff or devs do. The fact you spend ur free time doing all this is amazing and you have brought so many of us joy and memories to last a lifetime, we want that to continue and not lose this place. Please just some more transparency is all we ask......

I can understand the frustration and at the same time the warcry here.

(going a bit off topic for context)
When I joined back in 2021, everything was new, and exploring and finding out stuff was a thrill. It was actually one of the main things that kept me going, unveiling the mysteries if you will. I ended up joining a group, and then the crim life was also a blast, huge convoys with gang vehicles in gang colors, huge gang meetings, huge stakes. Back in 2021 there were weeks, if not a few months, of escalation before an official war started. I remember, the musket was my first weapon and losing it felt like losing the world.

Fast forward to 2024-2025, convoys are nowhere to be seen, we constantly have an ongoing beef somewhere, wars starts over fish and losing a gun is an everyday thing (with some rather respawning and losing everything, then giving that gun to the police or the opposing gang). Guns are now more accessible, and sometimes it feels like a new player within one bin run can have one gun, yet we still have complaints from people saying it is too much work to get a gun and/or losing it.

While this isn't me throwing a jab at anyone, this shows how the community has changed and how things get rushed now. The community and the server aren’t what they used to be, they have changed (for better or worse).

When the food update (almost one year ago) was released, there were instant complaints about it taking too long to level up. People were harvesting onions just to leave them on the floor to level up the skill, with zero roleplay purposes. They don’t work in a restaurant, and neither do they work for restaurants or warehouses.
When the drug update (street cred + chemist) was released, there were instant complaints about it taking ages to level up, and people wanted to max out both skills right away.

This really just shows what people are aiming for. Everyone does bins, not because it makes (or doesn’t make) sense for their character, but because it’s the best money maker, sadly, you need more people to roleplay with.
Food deliveries are just a mere entry point (I heard the other day in-game). Once you get enough for a license, you go taxi or bins. But what about the roleplay?

It’s a very thin line between what we can be transparent about and what we cannot. Imagine if we were transparent about the best money-making job, there would be no point in ever working other jobs, because either it would be for nothing (if it gave less than the best one) or it would make the best one obsolete if it surpassed its payout, wasting all the dev time invested in the other jobs.
What about balancing the payout from jobs? Well, you can probably guess how hard (if not impossible) that would be, right? Taxi jobs are somehow random; you can get lucky and have short rides or big rides to the middle of nowhere, we can’t balance that.

Since I joined the dev team, there was never a single good argument for a roadmap (unless I missed it). Roadmaps not only set a target on our heads as devs but also put unnecessary pressure on us. Just like it was said in a previous post, imagine we decide to rework something because the metrics show it’s unbalanced, yet the community thinks it’s fine or it gives them a lot of benefits, that would cause a lot of backlash on us.
If we decide to work on something and then real life prevents us from continuing or finishing that small update, it becomes an unfulfilled promise from the dev side. If there’s already disappointment over delays, imagine the amplified effect if we published an official document binding us to something.
Just like you play for fun, we dev for fun, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we do our little passion projects here and there.

There’s still a much-loved and wanted update that haunts us to this day, "the crim update". Right now, we are so off-branch that it would be impossible to just "plug and play" it. Of course, there are things we’ve used from it, things we’ll probably use in the future, and things we’ll never use. The server changed so much since it was made that some stuff makes no sense anymore. Yet, since it was announced in a "roadmapy" manner, it still haunts us to this day and is more of a meme used against the dev team than anything else.

While I understand that both sides of the equation are important, community and devs, the community cannot solely depend on updates to roleplay. I do understand updates are needed, but they shouldn’t be the reason the roleplay standard has declined.

It’s been said already, but we dev and staff for free, so don’t be surprised that every report on another player, every ban, every unban appeal, every suggestion or reaction to an update changes and affects our mood and our willingness to work for the server. Why should we reward people who are constantly breaking rules? Why work and implement new features if every recent change has been received with backlash, and more often than not, not in the most correct manners?



Even when I say "we", this is still just my opinion.

Bobinz said:

It’s been said already, but we dev and staff for free, so don’t be surprised that every report on another player, every ban, every unban appeal, every suggestion or reaction to an update changes and affects our mood and our willingness to work for the server. Why should we reward people who are constantly breaking rules? Why work and implement new features if every recent change has been received with backlash, and more often than not, not in the most correct manners?



Even when I say "we", this is still just my opinion.

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Only part i will comment on, While i do see where you're coming from of devin stuff and alot of backlash happening i also do believe that if something really random no one asks for gets added people will obviously be angry even if devs are volunteers or not it's the same as volunteering for a soup kitchen but instead of giving out soup you give waffles.
What i am trying to say is if as a dev (volunteer or not) you want to be praised you obviously try to get stuff that people will enjoy doing i know not everything needs to be what the people want and there needs to be balance like the recent money sink situation we all know those need to exist but the ways of them existing could be something worth discussing before drastic changes.
The same way, if you develop a mod to a game for free people will only play if the mod is good and something people enjoy.

But there are also counters to that for example Banks that people asked for nobody complained about them, the only thing people complained about it was the way to get cooling liquid and initially the way to get the drill which was limited to only like a few groups at the start.
Recently drug changes the only thing people complained was mostly some balances here and there which in my opinion is not really complaining but more constructive criticism and to this day I do believe people enjoyed the drug and Bank updates.

Hopefully this doesn't come out as me taking it out on the devs it's not the intention, but the main point is alot of the times it feels like alot of energy from devs is put into stuff people look at and think "meh" or "why was this even added" instead of placing it into something more relevant and with more community support.

As for the rest of the points you made i agree with most this will never be 2021 the economy is unfixable regardless of what you try to do because it will affect both new and old players but mostly new players the most and make them not want to play the only realistic thing you can do is delay or wipe, as for the guns thats the only thing i would actually disagree with, i actually reckon nowadays its a tiny bit harder to get guns because back in the day getting guns was easy the hard part was getting the money to pay for them while now i feel like its kinda of the opposite where guns are hardish to find, but money is not an issue (the reason why most people have alot of guns is because people been around for a while and had a stock of it in their containers stored away for ages).
Also the thing of these people commit rule breaks is bollocks everyone breaks rules no one is a saint xd.

Bobinz said:

Why should we reward people who are constantly breaking rules? Why work and implement new features if every recent change has been received with backlash, and more often than not, not in the most correct manners?
Even when I say "we", this is still just my opinion.

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Everything else you said is fair, except this. Why are we all punished when a handful of people are the ones causing issues, why should everyone be punished for the actions of one.

Rouble said:

Everything else you said is fair, except this. Why are we all punished when a handful of people are the ones causing issues, why should everyone be punished for the actions of one.

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because it only takes a small handful to ruin it for all unfortunately, and in general that's how it is in life

for example the casino adding in the horse betting, this was brilliant and people were down there gambling and having a laugh with each other, i wont name them but pretty quick one of the WL groups worked out if you waited for a horse to have like 30/1 odds then everyone bet max on all horses in that race, you'll either break even or end up winning millions and splitting it between the 6, personally i would have had a casino worker ban then all from the casino for cheating and maybe had some RP like suing them, but because they passed this info on and more were doing it then the main event had to be turned off as you would need a member of staff there 24/7 watching the betting to make sure people weren't cheating, this is a quick example of under 20 people who made it so a entire feature had to be turned off for the many who play

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as for what bobinz said about backlash
people don't give updates enough of a chance sometimes they go live and there will be a thread demanding it get removed within 20 minutes of the update instead of just using the discord dev public channel and raising a concern with the change or what seems like a error, like duke said in his response to the parking fees his DM are allays open, and as much as i probably give him and bobinz a headache i bounce a lot off them and talk about should things be looked at, tbf i do it with alot of the devs

where a update goes in and theirs a issue, instead of just going fuck this update we don't want it give some constructive feedback that can be used to tweak or fix the issues, bobinz worked on the food update for a year before it was added and in the first few hours we were chatting in DMs about how so many shop ownwes were giveing him shit for makeing smoothies not the meta anymore, like seriously the guy spent a year working on this with a group of other staff and some players adding and tweaking, and tweaking and tweaking, hell i think me and bobinz spend 9hrs in a test server one time trying to get stuff balanced and ready, but to get that instant backlash and see the complaints, hell if i wasent depressed allready i sure as hell would be after some of the reactions people give


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also to add i do miss 2021 RPUK it was a fun place where the RP was indepth, first week i recall going to azteka turf and trying to sell some weed to be met with a welcome party where the guy was nice enougth to give me like 100 bags of coke to sell so i could earn some money then pay my selling tax, then when i did there was a whole thing of takeing my pic and adding it into a chat saying i had paid and other bits, or where i was in the vikeings and we hired the vargos to run a convoy with us so we could sell like 29 bensons worth of fish, and wars were very far between, i beleive 8 months in TFA we got into 1 war with the hustlers, and it was fun not much gunplay and alot of machette fighting ending in some handshakeing and tradeing some BF400 to settle and go back to peace, but it was weeks of bits and bobs before war started, now its like oi you looked at me funny were going to war, very terrible and not needed, people say its because theres nothing to do so gangs get bored and war but theres more to do now than when i started so i dont get that one, other than everyone has a gun, i joined sep 2021, i was in 3 gangs, 2 WL gangs and a hangabout for the lost for a breif period, in all that time i have only ever owned 1 gun when i was TFA as it was given to me for joining and i gave that to another member when he lost his, i know im rambleing on this part but there seems to be to much direction on who is the best gunplayer these days over who is the better RPer

Over time, we’ve learned that hype isn’t worth the effort. Whenever we’ve shared early ideas or teased upcoming updates, it’s led to over-imagination and disappointment. People fill in the blanks with what they hope to see, not what’s actually planned. Then when the feature lands, it’s met with frustration because it doesn’t match the version that existed in their heads.

That cycle burns out both the community and the development team. We’ve been through it before the excitement, the speculation, the arguments, and then the backlash when something changes direction or gets delayed. It drags energy away from what matters: building, testing, and improving the actual game. That’s why we’ve moved away from public hype and transparency at that level. It’s not about keeping people in the dark; it’s about protecting the process and the people involved in it.

Development is steady, structured, and ongoing. It’s not always flashy or visible. It’s like a frog in warming water the temperature’s always rising, but you never feel the full jump at once. That’s what our progress looks like: constant refinement, small adjustments stacking up until suddenly things feel smoother, faster, and more polished. Every change, every fix, every tweak builds toward something bigger, even if it’s not announced with fanfare.

Not everyone agrees with every update or addition, and that’s normal. Different people value different experiences. Some prefer realism, others prefer balance or gameplay flow. Every decision we make gets reviewed and revisited over time. A thread being marked “closed” doesn’t mean we’ve written off the idea or stopped paying attention. It usually means we’ve made an initial decision and want to see how things perform before deciding what’s next.

We don’t measure success by comments alone. We look at what people say, but we also study what they do. Player behaviour tells the truth that discussion sometimes misses. If something receives criticism on paper but players still use it constantly, that says it’s doing something right. If something gets praised but ignored in practice, that tells a different story. The balance between words and actions gives us the full picture.

This is why we take our time with communication. We want to speak when there’s something real to show, not to fill space or fuel rumours. Every announcement, every change log, every discussion is intentional. It’s designed to reflect what’s ready, what’s stable, and what’s proven to work. That approach may feel slower or quieter from the outside, but it’s far more sustainable for the long term.

The team is always working. Things are always moving forward, even if you don’t see it right away. Systems get rewritten. Code gets optimized. Features evolve quietly in the background until they’re ready for release. That slow, steady approach has given us a stronger, more reliable foundation to build on.

We’d rather surprise people with something complete than disappoint them with something half-finished. Transparency is valuable when it builds trust, but destructive when it builds unrealistic expectations. So we’re keeping our focus where it belongs on development, review, and results.

The goal isn’t to chase hype; it’s to deliver stability, growth, and quality that lasts.

+ 1 for all the devs. No matter what's to come. The current is still amazing

Rouble said:

Everything else you said is fair, except this. Why are we all punished when a handful of people are the ones causing issues, why should everyone be punished for the actions of one.

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Just to clarify, this was in no way, shape or form an attack on the community. That sentence alone is a misrepresentation of the point I was trying to make.
My point is that our motivation fluctuates a lot, it goes up and down. Sometimes we enjoy what we are working on, sometimes we get stuck, sometimes we get a spark of an idea mid-development. Other times, we have to over-engineer a very simple thing so people don’t min-max, client dump, or exploit using emotes, etc etc. Believe it or not, this overcomplicating of simple things takes away a big portion of the fun and motivation.

So yes, those are the random thoughts that cross my mind from time to time, like: “why do I need to make sure this check is made before the player attempts to do something, mid-action, and right before completion?”

Sadly, some people:
- Cheat
- Client dump
- Min-max
- Exploit

Making sure the game is fair shouldn’t have to be a developer’s job, yet we do need to worry about it all the time.

Stevie said:

I'm glad you got a chance to gather your thoughts Mike, it's been really insightful and and eye-opening to say the least.View attachment 37432

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wow breaking news, I used gramerly. shock horror!

Rouble said:

I mean, you could hold on the swearing as I'm sure they don't find it nice, but +1. I've always wondered "do management not realise that if they implement more crim shit, less gatekeeping, they'd receive more donos and make more money" but it seems this server is a passion project rather than a way to make some extra income. I also don't know the laws the UK has relating to this stuff and all that tax shit. TBJ, base this server in Dubai bro, be tax exempt narsaye!

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You're exactly right, the purpose has never been to make money and no one gains any sort of income from RPUK. All money received from donations is kept within the community and used for infrastructure, paid assets etc.

Nomad said:

You're exactly right, the purpose has never been to make money and no one gains any sort of income from RPUK. All money received from donations is kept within the community and used for infrastructure, paid assets etc.

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That gained money could be used to bring more assets to the server tho

Rouble said:

That gained money could be used to bring more assets to the server tho

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They are doing that though, we've gotten a new motel, pub, the KOI, the puerto del sol marina has gotten an amazing make over and there have been many more (alsmost forgot luxury and Vespucci PDM)

Rouble said:

That gained money could be used to bring more assets to the server tho

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sure, but you still have to remember a good chunk of the money we have/get goes into ensuring that the server actually runs

Nikolai said:

sure, but you still have to remember a good chunk of the money we have/get goes into ensuring that the server actually runs

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That's why I said if more crim shit is released, more money will be made to make the server better with new assets etc