Extensive Suggestions from Future

[Future]

ADMINS!! Move this to Open for discussion!!
[size=2]I want opinions from other players. PM me if you cannot reply![/size]

About me:
I am playing GTA Vice City since early 2005 and GTA San Andreas since late 2005, but like all singleplayer games, I rarely played them. I discovered SA-MP recently, in last days of september 2009, I tried many servers, but Las Venturas Playground seems to be the best server. Even in the first month of playing here, I got many suggestions to make this server even more better in the Future!
(the message is writen mostly in last two weeks of octomber)

I always played GTA more as a driving game rather than a fighting game. So here, I am usually not a violent person, I don't attack if I am not attacked, especially outside Las Venturas, and when I want to fight, I avoid to fight with non-violent players. Sometimes I drive and cruise alone, hunting properties, exporting cars, and I hate to be killed for no reason (happened a lot of times). This is why I have much more deaths than kills, but I don't care about the ratio. Maybe I should use some commands to get away when I don't want to fight? (I will not use them to avoid death during a fight).
There are some ultra violent players who kills everyone that appears in their sight, especially unarmoured ones that can be an easy target, I think that their goal is just to achieve greater kills/death ratios... I hate them!

Properties:
There are 180 properties, probably enough, but most of them are rarely bought, the hunting is only for a small number of properties, so a lot of players swearing when their properties are bought by others.
I identified a lot of interesting places, where I suggest to put new properties. South and East areas of Los Santos have very few properties. How about the lighthouse? Contact me in-game to show more places!
Some properties are rather useless, because are placed in very, very isolated places, hardly to get, and have too low earnings per minute to attract hunters, sometimes the earnings are low as 1/100 from property price. Examples: CIA Hideout (? / ?), GTA-Host Headquarters (95.000 / 9.500), Hidden Cave (50.000 / 3.750), MTA's Development Central (35.000 / 3.500), Naked's Beach Club (? / ?), San Andreas Garbage Dump (52.500 / 3.250), San Fierro Golf Club (65.000 / 6.500), Stef's Shady Railwaybridge Spot (500.000 / 5.000).
A lot of properties have exaggerated earnings, even more than 1/10 of property price. Examples: Hidden Pond (1.000.000 / 120.000), if someone buys it after 10 minutes, the investition is already recovered plus you get back almost half of the price. Matthias Place For Chitters must be deleted because is too atractive and too easier to get from introduction of /visit.

Cars:
On the old server, was too few cars for 100+ players, some areas like Export bay really needed more cars. I wanted more 4-door cars, I wanted to suggest to add Admiral, Premier, Sentinel, and remove Elegy, Remington, Sabre, which are 2-door cars with very bad handling, also add Caddy, for fun!
Now, on the new server, I am happy to see more cars of different models, but I still have suggestions: there are some parkings overcrowded with cars, while some areas don't have even a single car, for example Commerce area, where I have to walk about 2 minutes to find one, in rural areas I have to walk even more. Probably is more realistic to see most of cars in the big parkings, but I want to see cars on the roadside of country roads. Some spawnpoints need rewriting their vehicle list, is useless to see sport cars with no off-road grip in the heart of mountains. Las Venturas area have too many bikes, especially Faggios. I want more Vortex, and anywhere, not only on Mount Chillad. The export list must be enlarged, maybe to 4-5 cars simultaneously, or at least add some of new cars to the list.
Some spawnpoints spawns 2 vehicles (one on the roof of another), this problem is not a bad thing, makes the game more funny. Some spawnpoints spawns cars under ground or in the air, the cars falls on the ground when I enter in them.


Trains:
There's 3 trains in the game driven by NPC bots, but in a day someone find a train without bot and we start to have fun with it, I don't know if was a 4th train or a NPC train which lost its driver, after several days we cannot find it anymore. The fun was over? I see that the trains don't collinde each other, plus, we have double track for almost all route, so I suggest to add NPC trains in both directions (6 trains) plus two trains without bot, for our fun. Maybe add also some trams in San Fierro.

Ramping:
I hate to have same button for shooting as for spawning ramps, I must disable ramping feature every time when I want to do drive-bys. I suggest to make something to pay money for every ramp spawned, not only for enabling ramping feature.

Car bombs:
I suggest to change the detonation button. Many times I died accidentally by my own car bomb, just because I pressed B to look back.

Bounties:
Is possible that every bountied player to have bounty sum above his head, or at least a marker? This will makes the bounties more effective, because players forgot who have bounty to concentrate their guns on it. [added later]
I killed a random player and I got over 100 million dollars, unfortunately I not noticed that he had a bounty and I died and lost all several seconds later. Another day I forgot that I had a big bounty on my head and I permitted someone to kill me. [added later]

Jail system:
On the old server, there was many moments in which I could punched other players in the ship as long as I wanted, without getting any warning message, only if I killed someone I got jailed... This was NOT right!
On this new server, I hate to be warned for "fight" if I punch in the air, without hitting someone, and after 5 non-consecutive warnings to be jailed. I can get jailed for a lot of non-fight related things, for example smoking or drinking in the ship, swimming underwater around of ship, or minimizing the game with Ctrl+Esc, or mistakes like trying to stop an animation with wrong button... Again, this is NOT right!
I suggest to allow punching in the air, to be considered fight ONLY if I punch AND hit someone, this will allow punching accidentally, as well smoking, drinking, so will reduce the chances to be jailed by mistake.
I consider useless the jail time extension with 1 minute for every punch in the jail, some players are trying to punch the jail visitors (which are fighting with jailed players), they got hours of jail, then waste admins time with unjail requests. Maybe reduce the time extension to 10 seconds.
Also in this new server I don't like to cannot /pm or /call while I am jailed, like on the old server.
Another wrong thing: If I throw a grenade, then I jump in the ship while grenade is still in air, then my grenade kills someone in the street, I get jailed for wrong reason!

Punishment:
I like the idea of punish the players who kills by drive-by, but I like to see a similar feature for the ones who crushes me under their cars, even if I think that a feature like this is impossible. Who will be punished if someone push an empty car downhill and the car stops right over me? Also, if I jump from my car in certain situations, I can crush myself under it!

Cruises:
This is the crazyest invention of this server. Who had this idea of "follow the leader"? Why it decided that all cruises to begin at Las Venturas airport and to end at the summit of Mount Chillad? Still, I love to cruise in groups and to show my driving skills, but I want more diversity, I also hate when the leader choose too dangerous route.
When I am the cruise leader I look to other cars and decide the route according to which cars have the other players, if most players have sport cars I choose more on-road route, if were many players in cruise I avoid narrow alleys where crashes are imminent. Sometimes I drived slowly to ensure that all players can follow me to avoid needing of stops for regrouping (someone with Infernus criticized me for being a snail). I don't stop only at sprays but also at the big parkings to allow players to change their cars.
Sometimes I cruise crazy: I overtake all cruise cars until I hit the leader ass, then I stop until I reach the last place, to can start overtaking again!
I suggest to all cruise players to have more respect, to pick up the crashed players. I encountered some drivers which accerelate when I want to enter as passager, some of them returns to crush me under their cars to ensure that I will not steal their cars!
I am against of the idea of allowing instant vehicle repairing in cruises, because the players will not need anymore to drive carefully and the cruises will become destruction derbies.

For crew:
This game is played for fun, and the real fun comes when we break some rules... I suggest to avoid banning for more than 1 day the players which don't destroy the server community by breaking little rules, avoid banning the players who swears after being killed / carbombed for no reason. Being violent may be more annoying than swearing. Always warn before banning, some players don't had time to read the rules!
Especially now when the LVP have very few players and needs recovery!
I believe that the main source of income is the player's donations. Who will ever donate for a server where they cannot have fun because they can get banned for every little offence? Or only the players which donate get respect from the admins?

Admins must not abuse their immunity, must respects same rules as players, and must give good behavior examples. Because most players takes behavior examples from admins.
Also every admin must not kick players for doing things that the admin also do. If the admin wants to swear players, allow players to swear admin too!

I suggest to give a second chance to newbie players who cheats unintentionally. A real situation happened several years ago: a friend visited me to show me a "surprise", he installed a game, then installed a mod, plus some trainers. I am not a newbie in computers and I can install anything by myself, but he wanted to make a surprise and told me to leave the room. I know that the trainers are cheating stuff, so I deleted them before starting to play in singleplayer, even if he insisted to play with trainers "to make the game more funny".
What I wanted to say: there are some newbies who never played GTA San Andreas, who don't know how to install a game, who don't know that the trainers are illegal, and their game is installed by friends. They must not get banned permanently from the first day...

I agreee with the rule "no religion or political discussions" These are the main causes of segregating communities and creating war. The hummanity will be happy if no religion will longer exists!

Yeah, long message... but if I have so many ideas why to not share them?

[Richard]

That's one bigass message.


About you: Eh, what should I say.. It's mainly a deathmatching server(point being that fighting is the most common thing even though it's not directly a deatchmatching server), you can expect to get shot at.

Properties: There's some easy properties that don't earn much, there's harder properties that earn more. I am not sure how the current stuff is, I barely buy properties, so I rather leave this open for someone else's answer.

Cars: There's a "random vehicle spawner" in place, which takes a vehicle from the same class when replacing a car. However, this doesn't seem to work completely as we want. Because, as you said, there's a lot of faggio's around. It indeed does take a bike, but a tad much of one kind.

Trains: I am not sure, this is something I don't know much about, how many trains, if we are able to put more trains and all. I'm sure a developer can answer on that.

Ramping: I can driveby without spawning a ramp. The ramps are set to left control and right alt(or at least for me, depends on your settings). Those keys indeed make you shoot as well. But for shooting, why use a key if you have your mouse as well? Do you also use one of those keys when you are fighting?

Carbombs: B? Again, depends on your settings. I am not sure which standard keys are used for it, but I look back using either MMB or 2 keys at the same time. As long as I don't do that, I'm fine. And it barely happens that I do it, just pay a little bit of attention.

Jail: I am not sure if this is possible, I don't think it can detect if you and punch and hit someone. I think it only detects if you punch or not. Again, I am not completely aware of the current system with this, as for accidentally hitting the ship with a bullet or so. A developer should be able to answer.

Punishment: Same idea, not sure if it is possible. A developer should be able to answer.

Cruises: People can start a cruise on different places too, but it makes a whole lot more sense(and it will attract more people) to start in the main city of the server. The ending on Mount Chilliad us how a lot of people think a cruise "should" end. I don't agree, it gets quite boring if you cruise a lot and always end there. It's completely up to the leader.

I overtake all cruise cars until I hit the leader ass, then I stop until I reach the last place, to can start overtaking again!
I suggest to all cruise players to have more respect

Those two don't really go together too well. By speeding up (making it some sort of race, people may follow you) you'll most likely attract others to do it. Not to mention you have a higher chance of crashing into people. And then slowing back down to get in the back, people may not expect you to brake suddenly and hit you.

People rarely get banned on the first offence (cheating excluded). It depends if you are new to the server or not. If you know the rules and you purposely break them, you know you will be punished somehow. Be it jailtime, a kick, a ban or whatever more you can think of, you break them on purpose. You know you shouldn't do it, and do it anyway. I know breaking rules is fun, but if the police catches you, whining to them that everyone does it or that it's just the first time won't help you, this is the same situation.
As for swearing when you, as you put as example, die from a carbomb or so, no big deal. You surely won't be banned for saying "Fuck, damn carbomb". The only thing you can expect there is a little warning, but I even doubt you will get that.

Always warn before banning, some players don't had time to read the rules!

As I said above, we pretty much always do. But the excuse of not having had time to read the rules is void, that's your problem, not ours. When registering you accept the rules. When playing as an unregistered, you have to accept the rules before you start. If you don't accept them, you get automatically kicked. If you do, you get into the server and can start playing by the rules. So if you get banned and say "I didn't know I couldn't cheat/bug abuse/whatever", it's not our problem, it's yours.

We cannot see if what you say is true over the internet, you can easily say it was your brother playing, your brother installing them, your friend installing them or whatever more. It can happen, sure, but we cannot know. It might as well be a lie (people tell us all the time they didn't cheat, even though the evidence says the complete opposite). Your computer is your responsibility, if you let him use your computer to have a surprise for you in the game, it's your responsibility if you have cheats installed.

[Future]

A month passed...
And my topic is still placed where only the crew can reply, thanks Richard for that reply, but I still wait for a reply from a developer. Few of my suggestions I saw in the game. Meanwhille, I added several new suggestions.
Again, I request to be moved in Open for Discussion, or I will recreate it myself elsewhere!!
And I suggest to make entire CSI section opened to replies for everyone, there's a lot of topics where I have some info to add.