General complaint/suggestion

[Matthias]

Hello,

I hope this post is going to change something at LVP, since changes are needed really hard. I'll be backing my statements up with quotes from Jay. This post is mainly made right now because Jay has quit the development team, and I've had a talk with him. He's given his general idea about LVP and I can't say I disagree with him.

As a start, I'm not trying to offend anyone in this topic, I'm simply suggesting stuff that should change (in my opinion, that is). I'd like some replies from the management and Peter.

I'm going to start by posting the entire conversation.

I used /msg to start the conversation, that's why I'm not the one starting to talk.

[13:49:04] -> *Jay* first thing Wesley said is that we'll talk about the entire plan
[13:49:11] -> *Jay* so hopefully stuff will chagne
[13:49:32] -> *Jay* if not, I will probably quit
[13:49:37] -> *Jay* and then we're doomed
[13:49:43] -> *Jay* we're probably already without you ;p

[13:50:04] Session Ident: Jay (GTANet, Matthias) (Jay@play.at.ww3.and.visit.ww3samp.com)
[13:50:04] <Jay> You should be management
[13:50:16] <Matthias> lol thanks, but I don't see it happen
[13:50:22] <Jay> and that's the problem
[13:50:25] <Jay> None of the management care
[13:50:29] <Matthias> people like you
[13:50:31] <Matthias> should be management
[13:50:33] <Jay> they don't care about GTA anymore
[13:50:34] <Matthias> who were willing to invest
[13:50:34] <Matthias> idd
[13:50:46] <Jay> Your willing to invest too
[13:51:01] <Jay> You where one of the only people who replied when I made that post about low counts @ crew forums
[13:51:06] <Matthias> yeah
[13:51:08] <Jay> that says enough
[13:51:11] <Matthias> you know what annoys me the most?
[13:51:18] <Matthias> people who say they're going to do stuff
[13:51:22] <Matthias> like the big post writing up
[13:51:24] <Matthias> @ the sa-mp forums
[13:51:26] <Matthias> everyone agreed
[13:51:35] <Matthias> I bumped it 2 or 3 times with "let's get this started"
[13:52:03] <Jay> They need new management
[13:52:10] <Matthias> Idd
[13:52:12] <Jay> to sort all this
[13:52:24] <Jay> even if it means getting rid of some of the old management that do nothing
[13:53:28] <Jay> even now
[13:53:31] <Jay> LVP has crashed
[13:53:41] <Jay> there's nobody about to deal with it
[13:53:45] <Matthias> yeah lol
[13:53:47] <Jay> there isn't even an automatic restarter...
[13:54:02] <Jay> They're to strict about things
[13:54:21] <Jay> They make passwords too hard
[13:54:25] <Jay> like the SSH and rcon password
[13:54:43] <Matthias> yeah lol
[13:54:49] <Matthias> nobody cares about "hacking" lvp
[13:54:50] <Jay> you know what LVP needs
[13:54:56] <Jay> A new owner
[13:55:05] <Jay> A new head management member
[13:55:06] <Matthias> not a bad idea, but I doubt it'll happen
[13:55:08] <Jay> to sort all this out
[13:55:15] <Jay> idd
[13:55:21] <Matthias> well
[13:55:24] <Matthias> there has only been one ban
[13:55:28] <Matthias> by the Anti rcon hack thingy
[13:55:35] <Matthias> (3 times fail login = ban)
[13:55:39] <Matthias> and that was shoru
[13:55:39] <Jay> yeah
[13:55:42] <Jay> lol
[13:55:43] <Matthias> he "tried"
[13:56:01] <Jay> even if he did get into rcon he wouldn't understand
[13:56:07] <Matthias> yeah lol
[13:56:18] <Matthias> I think I'm gonna try to get the entire management
[13:56:20] <Matthias> and dev team
[13:56:21] <Matthias> together
[13:56:23] <Matthias> and try to talk
[13:56:30] <Matthias> with your arguments if I may use them
[13:57:05] <Jay> sure
[13:57:31] <Matthias> cool
[13:57:34] <Matthias> right now
[13:57:40] <Matthias> I just wanna invest more time into my site
[13:57:44] <Matthias> if we could just
[13:57:46] <Matthias> me and thiaZ that is
[13:57:48] <Matthias> finish this version
[13:57:52] <Matthias> make it stable
[13:57:55] <Matthias> and just release it
[13:57:56] <Matthias> and stop caring
[13:58:03] <Matthias> if nothing is changing that is
Session Close: Sun Jul 04 14:31:47 2010

I'll be quoting parts of it now (please note that I've taken irrevelant things out when quoting, which is why I've posted the entire conversation above):

[13:50:04] <Jay> You should be management
[13:50:16] <Matthias> lol thanks, but I don't see it happen
[13:50:22] <Jay> and that's the problem
[13:50:25] <Jay> None of the management care
[13:50:29] <Matthias> people like you
[13:50:31] <Matthias> should be management
[13:50:33] <Jay> they don't care about GTA anymore
[13:50:34] <Matthias> who were willing to invest
[13:50:34] <Matthias> idd
[13:50:46] <Jay> Your willing to invest too
[13:51:01] <Jay> You where one of the only people who replied when I made that post about low counts @ crew forums
[13:51:06] <Matthias> yeah
[13:51:08] <Jay> that says enough

I can't agree more here. No offense to the management but I don't think anyone can say decisions have been fast lately, or that the management activity is good. I can't blame you, GTA SA is a 6 year old game and I can understand if you're bored of it, but that doesn't mean you should lack your duties being management. Maybe a few new management members would help. (People who are active on IRC/forums and are willing to spend time on LVP).

[13:52:24] <Jay> even if it means getting rid of some of the old management that do nothing
[13:53:28] <Jay> even now
[13:53:31] <Jay> LVP has crashed
[13:53:41] <Jay> there's nobody about to deal with it
[13:53:45] <Matthias> yeah lol
[13:53:47] <Jay> there isn't even an automatic restarter...

Having new management would solve this problem. I still don't get why there isn't an auto restarter, or people who can start it up quickly. Imagine this happens at 7 AM, who's going to fix it? I've had stuff happen so many times awaiting management in the morning and even if someone pops up he doesn't have the correct rights.

[13:54:21] <Jay> They make passwords too hard
[13:54:25] <Jay> like the SSH and rcon password
[13:55:21] <Matthias> well
[13:55:24] <Matthias> there has only been one ban
[13:55:28] <Matthias> by the Anti rcon hack thingy
[13:55:35] <Matthias> (3 times fail login = ban)
[13:55:39] <Matthias> and that was shoru

I've poked Wesley right after the server crash (around 15:00 today) and he was happy to help, but didn't have the password with him. Can't blame him for that obviously, but why not have a more easier, maybe less secure password that _every_ management member knows? As I've said, there's only been one person to try to get into the RCON thingy and he wouldn't have a clue what to do even if he guessed it.

Another thing which is a huge problem is crew activity;

[14:03:57] <+Peter> Take the problems within the crew.. LVP's hardcore crewmembers start leaving, lots of them at a time, coverage is lower than 20%, and the solution of the crew management is to "just find more crew"

Even though the crew is inactive, there are lots of potential good moderators out there! I've passed some names on to estroe (who I can't blame, he's on vacation), but if I remember correctly there are 2 other crew management members? Why not promote Hitman to administrator, and SolidRock/Gibbs and Kase to moderator? They would all do a great job. You have no idea how easy it is keeping the little servers we have on the server, simply by making fun competitions (races, a few million as price) and helping them out learning LVP? On a normal day we average 11 players in the morning. I've got that up to 25 easily (this morning), just by helping out a few people who were new, told them to register and learned them about making money. One of them even said "this is the fucking best server I ever played on". Imagine the crew would do that all day? Activity would go up a lot.

Now about the development; Jay has got a point. I can understand it's not easy making a proper decision for an entire team. But something needs to be done.

Wesley has proposed we all chat about it and come up with something everyone likes, great idea imo.

Concluding, this needs to happen in my opinion (otherwise LVP will slowly die out):

• New management member(s)
  
• More promotions.
  
• Get a good plan for LVP 3.0
  

I think Wesley and Fireburn will make the third point happen, so that's not a real problem any more.

I took my time to write up this post, so please take your time to read it and reply. I'm sorry if I offended anyone, but there's no way I can do this properly without offending anyone.

Matthias

[thiaZ]

I think we should advertise more, there are some (german) forums which I know for example  where we could post stuff. I think when more people would know the server, more people would play on it. Also something like a "Event week" would be nice Some random minigame modes from monday to saturday and sunday would be the big release, so everyone know would know when it is and they would have fun before.

//Edit: And i think we should make LVP more newcomer friendly, as Matthias said (/\), maybe some guides like in roleplay servers with different campositions, a little tutorial about all features, most new guys are leaving after they have been killed. And thats another opinion: It's Las Venturas Playground and not Las Venturas Slaughter House, to my mind we should give RPG'ers the same chance to play on the server as deathmatchers.

[Matthias]

Read 21 times and no replies.. Come on I want a reply from more than one management member

[Bakura]

• Get a good plan for LVP 3.0
  

What's wrong this time? Do you guys really want to go almost an entire year without updates, without considering the impact of that?

I didn't hear any noticeable moaning when I made a suggestion, so why is that brought up now?

[Matthias]

What's wrong this time? Do you guys really want to go almost an entire year without updates, without considering the impact of that?

I didn't hear any noticeable moaning when I made a suggestion, so why is that brought up now?

Yay, a reply!

Yet... we're doing a completely useless update in a months time from now that will see no features from a players point of view accept for one Matthias suggested about doing a new vehicle layout.

And then after that we're expected to do another release a month later with single features alone that would take at least 2 months to do (Minigame core rewrite).

He's got a point there^. I didn't think of that at the time you posted it, but he's competely right. Not too much should change, but the features should divided more properly.

[Sander]

I should visit the dev board more often, it's funny here.

[13:54:21] <Jay> They make passwords too hard
[13:54:25] <Jay> like the SSH and rcon password
[13:55:21] <Matthias> well
[13:55:24] <Matthias> there has only been one ban
[13:55:28] <Matthias> by the Anti rcon hack thingy
[13:55:35] <Matthias> (3 times fail login = ban)
[13:55:39] <Matthias> and that was shoru

It seems you are underestimating the security risk here. LVP is running on a fast box with 100 mbit upload, thus an ideal machine for a botnet or fxp server. Running SSH is already a great potential risk due to brute force attacks. So we use strong non dictionary passwords to ensure our safety.
And the rcon password is used more then once, only shoru told us about it. You don't even need to be in-game to try to brute force the rcon password.
Although I kinda agree that our current rcon password is kinda long But if /my rcon [on/off] works, almost nobody in the Management needs the real password.

[13:53:47] <Jay> there isn't even an automatic restarter...

We used to have one, which failed quite often.
Mostly because there was a bug in the gamemode or scriptfiles with wrong permissions which caused server crashes (Jeej for SA-MP error handling!) Or gamemode restarts, which an automatic restarter doesn't prevent.
And it is not like that we are crashing on a daily base nowdays. So a few hours downtime can happen.
Remember that we are still running this server on a volunteer base, not as a business model. So we don't guarantee a 100% uptime per year.

[Matthias]

Thanks for the reply Sander, that cleared some things up.