The player count crisis.

[Jayray Holder]

@MaximMy question to your point is

Why don't you just play another community?

Don't get me wrong, i am not disagreeing with your points, merely asking you to back it up. If you believe that we need Radical change to the meta of the server, and we need to act like Reborn/GTA. Why not just play there? Isn't it the Balance between RP and Gunfights what makes RPUK....well..... RPUK? Here there's a balance of people. I mean who knows, maybe you are right, maybe WhoIsDan is right, it's all a guessing game as to what will work. 

When the current redzones came out, i think we had like, 120 players, we had to spam to get on the server, so maybe you're correct. 

I think an issue worthy of noting is the rules. More specifically, Initiation. If i was a new player coming to this server, the rules would be a very difficult part for me to follow. As everyone stated, combat is part and parcel of Arma 3. The whole "Must have High quality RP before shots are fired" is very much subjective to the invidivuals. No one can decide if something is high quality or not.

Most importantly if we are going to be changing the Meta of the server to be more combat orientated, then the rules need to accommodate for that. Saying things such as "Put your hands up or you'll be shot" shouldn't be considered low quality RP. The fact that on some servers you can scream "Hands up or die" or "5,4,3,2,1", i don't believe it's a big issue.

But there's some good points here

 

[Robbie]

Most importantly if we are going to be changing the Meta of the server to be more combat orientated, then the rules need to accommodate for that. Saying things such as "Put your hands up or you'll be shot" shouldn't be considered low quality RP. The fact that on some servers you can scream "Hands up or die" or "5,4,3,2,1", i don't believe it's a big issue.

If the day comes when we accept this as the standard of roleplay is the day it might aswell be turned into a king of the hill server. Personally I think we should be thinking of ways to bring the server back to its glory days where the roleplay is the priority not the gun fights. I mean isn't that the hole reason that we have all decided to play on roleplay.co.uk? 

 

[Simon Ross]

I think we should be thinking of ways to bring the server back to its glory days where the roleplay is the priority not the gun fights

That isn't the general dynamic of Arma anymore. Gone are the days of proper RP, at this point you pick your server depending on the method you want your gunfight to start. If you want constant fighting then you go to GTA, if you want a bit of RP, alongside some decent redzones you go to RR, and if you want a bit of proper RP before your gunfight starts, you come here.

The Redzones RPUK has are for the most part unsustainable, Posiedon when holding them all sure as hell doesn't make any money, and although they do make money for rebels when holding them, it is constant loss when actually fighting for them. 

 

[Ji]

The Redzones RPUK has are for the most part unsustainable, Posiedon when holding them all sure as hell doesn't make any money, and although they do make money for rebels when holding them, it is constant loss when actually fighting for them. 

Not true, I've made around probably 50-70 mil from the zones since they came out.

 

[Simon Ross]

Not true, I've made around probably 50-70 mil from the zones since they came out.

As Poseidon I have not made anything off of them. On a good day they cover my costs of going there, but that is again quite rare. For me to make my money back from kills, I need to kill 8 people inside the cap zone. Chances are I am not going to get 8 kills in one life in the redzones, and even if I did, there is a very small chance those kills are all going to be in the cap zone. The money we get in from the other zones is also very little - around 10-15k generally from OG, so for us going to the redzones is always losing money. 

When I played them as a rebel, I made money when they were uncontested, but a lot of the time for me it was a case of we had to regularly fight for them, which meant we didn't get the every 5 minute money because someone would knock it down and then we would not get the zone back, and the cycle repeats. I made money when we had them uncontested, but for a majority of the time they were being contested. 

 

[PC Akula]

There is nothing to do as poseidon all you do is just go zones, when high grade was a thing and actually worthwhile you would have a lot of rebels and police. I think the suggestions put under consideration should be looked at and the faction reworked. Priorities should be set aside from zones and reworking rebel and poseidon. An altis life server shut down a few weeks ago giving rpuk the chance to bring new players but as there is nothing to dour they left

 

[Tadeusz]

Don't think that necessarily all the issues are dev related, more on that later.

Sure the drugs stuff could be reworked. However, it should be noted the devs in their latest work have changed them in some way. The term once was high risk, high reward. Instead with drugs now it just feels low risk, meh reward. You still see new players do lower grade drugs runs. It's just the older player base will not go to these areas and rarely see that these get done.  But I do see it on admin cam.

Another issue is in retaining players. On this though it is hard to comment as essentially I've been here for a long time. A few observations from the outside in is it always feels as though the base jobs such as taxi, bus or arac. For example,  have the costs of licenses, vehicles, uniforms set too expensive and generally don't carry a "worth it" yield.

The post office should be moved to kavala Square so it's more likely to be used by newer players looking to make a quick cash. And finally a review of licenses it doesn't make sense that the higher grade and more profitable runs don't need a license but the less profitable ones do need a license. 

But the other things that could be fixed by non dev. For instance let's start with whitelisted interactions, perhaps scrapping should be restricted to only higher tier crimes such as involvement in high grade runs and the bigger hiests. And an official process to report something stolen is out in place. 

As for rules. Maybe the rule 7.2.5 (I think that's the one) should either be changed to a multiple rebel waves system or just removed entirely as it is just too difficult for rebels to pull off a heist. The other rule to look at is having to initiate for friends and allies. If this is done through gang uniforms that's fine. 

Aye sure the player base likes gunfights but the servers game mode is roleplay and while yeah I think that we should keep those guys entertained we shouldn't focus on the zones too much. 

I am no longer in the police or poseidon so it's hard for me to comment on what they should be given. But what I see from the outside looking in is that associates do not require a higher rank to patrol with but PCSO's do. Also its a pain in the ass to find someone to give them the appropriate guns even when they qualify to use it. Finally the remoteness of the prison. Ideally there should be more than one and one shouldn't be far from kavala. 

Sorry for the long post. Would also like to thank the devs for the latest update. Absolutely fantastic work.

 

[Ponty]

@Wilco

My arguments stems around the visibility or therefore lack of visibility of the management team and the accountability issue that has been prevalent for years.

I am not stating members of management should be completely ousted from their positions, I even offered a solution of them holding an honourary role to ensure they are still a part of this community.

I know members such as TBJ, Ciaran have other commitments and rightly so they should, this community cannot be the be all and end all of someone's life 24/7. But when looking at others such as Mr Cardoso, who I only engaged with briefly over Gang Beasts in early 2017 when I was staff. I won't try and make up a reason for his absence but he last visited the forums on the 27th July 2020. How can somebody provide their input without being able to potentially grasp the current state of the community? The idea of my suggestion is to have a board of perhaps 4-6 members of the community who have been longstanding members that possess individual ideas and the willingness to drive the community in a positive manner, not one controlled by agenda or personal views.

Now about accountability, over the past however many years, each member of the community is accountable to some degree, players are accountable for following the rules, if not they are banned. Faction members are held accountable to additional rules, if breached, they are sanctioned or removed. Faction leads are accountable for their actions on a larger scale whereby the mistakes they make are more public and as public figures need to be addressed appropriately to send the right message. I've seen NHS leads, Police leads be banned, removed for small things as well as large things.

But there is an inherent issue, I don't see the same level of accountability held towards management, this is in particular aimed at Vladic's streams. He will appear once a week on a Friday, proceed to log onto the server (Altis or GTA) and spectate or engage with players on at that time. Whilst doing so, Vlad has a duty to entertain his viewers, which he does by getting involved with RolePlay or by drinking, this results in a potential lack of stable mind and when combined with lack of knowledge regarding the meta of the servers, when something is seen he does not agree with, he will either go into an outburst or make rash decisions quickly. Proceeding to publicly humiliate that person in the process via means of swearing, throwing verbal abuse, which I will add, if somebody else did, would be banned on the spot. 

When his stream is all said and done, what happens next? The persons subject to his out of game abuse are left to feel stupid or lack the want to continue playing. Most people expect to get banned just for disagreeing with him. But what happens to Vlad? He goes away for a week to return Friday and do it all over again. That to me and I'm sure many other members, is not fair. I understand a reason for lack of knowledge of the current meta is down to him being deployed for months at a time, fair enough, but that doesn't excuse his demeanour or behaviour on stream towards others who are here every other day at the least and are trying to do what they can. 

As a TL;DR

Management for their own reasons are not around enough to show a definitive understanding of the direction of the server, as a solution, a team of long standing members could be formed to make these decisions in the interests of the community. As well as this, accountability on the server is askew, management are not held to the same standards of accountability that other members are, allowing them to get away with publicly humiliating members whilst also hurling abuse at them.

 

[Anonymous Mosquito]

One thing that I've seen a LOT and I mean a LOT of players complaining about is the licensing system, doing a run is already risky enough and having to carry a wad of cash on you to buy the license adds to that risk and means a fair few players just tend to not want to take it because if they lose all that on their first run they're effectively bankrupt because they've lost vehicle, cash and gear! Maybe there should be a system where you buy LEGAL Licenses at the DMV In Kavala Square (Metals/Sands/Basic Gems/Stone/Trees etc.) and have the illegal licenses available at a Rebel DMV or something like that.

Another thing that gets complained about a lot is the XP System, you can spend 40 minutes harvesting, get robbed on the way and you get NOTHING, not even the tiniest bit of XP, have it so that you get a reasonable amount for harvesting, a larger chunk for processing and then you just get a smaller amount alongside the money for selling it, as an addition in regards to the XP thing, XP Needs a buff, you can spend an entire day roleplaying and helping people out, repairing cars, healing people and things like that and you won't even gain a single level which is insane IMO, people have asked for a while to buff XP Values so the levels system actually gets something to it

 

[Wilco]

That isn't the general dynamic of Arma anymore

Your right and that's because low quality "RP" servers brought us to this point, It's a shame but I appreciate that we have Roleplayers who don't like to roleplay.

However something happened on the 6th/7th of December where numbers took a massive dive, what at that date was people so unhappy with?

 

[Simon Ross]

Your right and that's because low quality "RP" servers brought us to this point, It's a shame but I appreciate that we have Roleplayers who don't like to roleplay.

However something happened on the 6th/7th of December where numbers took a massive dive, what at that date was people so unhappy with?

I think currently some of the reasons are:

- Christmas (obviously)

- Cyberpunk Release (10th December)

- GTA Online update 

Obviously this isn’t the entirety of it, but these are all things which I have seen players who would normally be on Altis playing 

Also however I think the moving towards lower quality RP isn’t just the fault of other servers. I occasionally play other servers and don’t enjoy the RP standards they provide.  I enjoy the redzones they have and the fights they provide, but not the RP standards on there. The reason people still play here is because of the higher RP standards, but people also enjoy gunfights now more than previously, and prefer these to be the end result of the RP rather than in the past. 
 

For example, if you go 12 months or so back, all I had to say about redzones was negative, alongside gunfights elsewhere, whereas now this has changed to now where I support them. I think it is the natural progression of what happens over time as you play the altis server, especially the amount many of us do.

 

[Hive]

So, some great points I have seen after spending nearly 45 mins reading. Arma 3 has been out for so many years, being realeased in 2013. Back then roleplay was huge, like really big. People actually bought the game to get some amazing roleplay experiences, but as time goes on stuff dies out, and for this Roleplay has kinda died out. Sure, there are still many roleplayers out there who look for a good bit of fun, but not many. 

no rebels means nothing for Police or Poseidon to do

Agreed, each faction gives another faction to do something - Rebels give Poseidon and Police things to do. With no rebels, nothing happens at all.

I think we should be thinking of ways to bring the server back to its glory days where the roleplay is the priority not the gun fights

Personally I'm a big fan gunfights, there fun what can I say? Like I've stated before there isn't many people who want to roleplay,  it lowkey kinda died. Which is quite sad ngl. The only type of decent RP we get currently is being taken hostage, which isn't good. 

All in all we need fresh stuff, something that will bring so many players to the server. Like Maxim has stated, we need things along the lines of a Warzone. Yes this will bring people who want gunfights, but we need players! If we did implement it, not every single new player who comes will be a gunfight nerd, some of them will actually roleplay! Yes it may not be a lot, but it's still there right?

 

[Wilco]

I think currently some of the reasons are:

- Christmas (obviously)

- Cyberpunk Release (10th December)

- GTA Online update 

A bit early for Xmas, usually Xmas increases the server counts 

No cyberpunk was the 10th, That game is also marmite

A lot of our Arma community don't play GTA RP, In fact a lot of the GTA RP players don't even own Arma! It brought its own audience.

This topic as a lot of mix messages, The Roleplayers dislike how combat orientated the server has become and the gunfighters want a new gun related thing each week so I am going to ask everyone who is contributing to bullet point 3 changes to the server that they think can be done easily that will make them play Altis Life again this Xmas.

When the numbers drop completely off we are not afraid or shy to end our support for Altis Life, It would be a shame to do after nearly 7 years but if people do not enjoy a server anymore and we do not have any experienced Altis Life devs chucking their hat into the ring to develop for us what more can be done ?

To me this is the last call and last chance to get things right... councils of players and 6 hour meetings do not work and won't work, Sorry to shut down a good idea on paper but what can that team of players do that I cannot ? I know for a fact you cannot argue for a suggestion to be done and put on the live server louder and with more weight than I can.

How would these players be voted in? If the community voted for them it will be friends of friends and I doubt there would be enough diversity in that team to mold a server that everyone wants, then you need to obviously get the development team on board that it is the best approach.

The suggestions forum isn't working, That isn't the community's fault that is the lack of will from the development team to approve and get them in the server, Always been honest about that.

Maybe we need a return of community votes related to the Altis Life server

 

[Anonymous Mosquito]

A bit early for Xmas, usually Xmas increases the server counts 

No cyberpunk was the 10th, That game is also marmite

A lot of our Arma community don't play GTA RP, In fact a lot of the GTA RP players don't even own Arma! It brought its own audience.

This topic as a lot of mix messages, The Roleplayers dislike how combat orientated the server has become and the gunfighters want a new gun related thing each week so I am going to ask everyone who is contributing to bullet point 3 changes to the server that they think can be done easily that will make them play Altis Life again this Xmas.

When the numbers drop completely off we are not afraid or shy to end our support for Altis Life, It would be a shame to do after nearly 7 years but if people do not enjoy a server anymore and we do not have any experienced Altis Life devs chucking their hat into the ring to develop for us what more can be done ?

To me this is the last call and last chance to get things right... councils of players and 6 hour meetings do not work and won't work, Sorry to shut down a good idea on paper but what can that team of players do that I cannot ? I know for a fact you cannot argue for a suggestion to be done and put on the live server louder and with more weight than I can.

How would these players be voted in? If the community voted for them it will be friends of friends and I doubt there would be enough diversity in that team to mold a server that everyone wants, then you need to obviously get the development team on board that it is the best approach.

The suggestions forum isn't working, That isn't the community's fault that is the lack of will from the development team to approve and get them in the server, Always been honest about that.

Maybe we need a return of community votes related to the Altis Life server

Community votes would be a HUGE +1 from a lot of people I'm sure, as for the events this year, why not turn the rewards for redzones up? Make it so that kills reward sizeable chunks of cash and XP, runs offer say.... 25% more (until say Jan 1st) and Faction Paychecks get a slight increase? These are all IMO but I genuinely believe they would help! I have a lot in this server (Despite not having played it hugely!) and I really don't want to see it die and I'm sure the majority of its players, admins and devs dont want to see that happen either!

 

[DJ]

so I am going to ask everyone who is contributing to bullet point 3 changes to the server that they think can be done easily that will make them play Altis Life again this Xmas.

1. Make Illegal runs worth more than legal

2. Give Rebels more viability than factions ( Factions don't need to have everything Rebels do) Custom Bases, Custom Vehicle Skins, Exclusive Weapons/attachments

3.  (Can't think of something may update later)

 

[Yestin]

1. Warzone Type of events.

2. Make rebel a bit more appealing, Drop prices a bit?, Add stuff and lets make it a little bit less restricted.Loadout wise that is atleast.

3. Also not sure yet. Will update later.

 

[Ponty]

I’m fairly sure the initial message behind WhoIsDans post was to iterate that roleplay and player based has decreased.

So seeing response such as money making ought to be easier when the economy is cracked or to make more deathmatch events seems counterintuitive does it not?

 

[Simon Ross]

1. Make illegal and drug runs ACTUALLY WORTH IT - make ME as a player with 180+ Million want to do a drug run in a hemtt. - make it pay around 3 mill for the best runs, so the money is actually worth it. I think it is key to make the use of land vehicles more viable as it encourages more encounters. 
 

2. Make rebel much better - give more incentives, pull big gangs back together. IMO it should be done via making gang bases more affordable (or make money much easier and more fun to get). Remove the stuff where it costs double the amount for your second property and triple the amount for your third - make it so that your second and third property costs the same as your first 

3. I would say something like a warzone would he nice alongside this. Once a restart when over a certain amount of players. 

So seeing response such as money making ought to be easier when the economy is cracked or to make more deathmatch events seems counterintuitive does it not?

Not really mate. Rn you cannot compete with the police when it comes to sustainability of a MK1 especially, and I do think the mk1 price is what causes all these gun price moaning. The mk18, type 115 etc are well priced, but mk1 is stupid expensive. Make the mk1 175 - 200k or so for rebels and it will make the server better. I pay 200k as Poseidon for it and it drains my bank quickly, and when I played rebel it was even worse 

 

[PC Akula]

server was full before capture zones were introduced there are still people buying the game so would be new to  combat so making runs better and more jobs and changing the runs should be a priority in my opinion

 

[Ponty]

@Simon Ross

Fair enough then, I was under the belief money and economy was still shocking, at the levels of where everyone and their nan has 100 million