Idea to save VC:MP

[Charley]

Problem

There is apparently a dwindling playercount in the mod.

Cause

You might say that it's because Vice City is an old-ass game, and VC:MP is outdated or buggy. Or that we have outdated gamemodes. Fine, but that's always been the case. People have been making that same argument since the day that VC:MP was born.

Take a look at the official VC:MP forum. This is the first point of contact for anyone new to the mod. It is a graveyard. It's a boring, semi-forgotten wasteland of half-literate randomers. I put it to you that this is the main problem.

If you searched 'Vice City Multiplayer' on Google, and found that forum, would you be interested to explore the mod and its community? Fuck no.

The biggest draw of the mod is its community, but for potential new players, the community is barely visible.

Problem 2

The VC:MP forum is dead.

Cause

The developers kept the official forum under lock and key from the community. In what other platform do the product developers have control over the product, but also 100% control and responsibility over the marketing, PR and community management around the product? None. Why? Because they're product developers.

My assumption is that the devs hoped to be impartial towards the community, to give the community a game to play, but prevent any individuals or groups from monopolizing or regulating access to that game. That is a laudible, but incomplete approach. For it to work, they would need to find another way to stimulate balanced community activity. Just making boards on a forum and allowing people to post is evidently not enough.

Solution

Create a community management team.

The community management team should be responsible for representing the official voice of VC:MP. They can endorse events, partner with other event organisers, and also coordinate and create official VC:MP events. They are responsible for keeping the official forum interesting and active, engaging every segment of the community - not just those which are dominant.

I would suggest the following leadership structure:

Community Admins
These are normal Community Managers, but with a bit more responsibility. They have full access to moderate the forum, create and modify boards and categories, create and set membergroups, and administrate users; they're responsible for settling any disputes or deadlocks among community managers; they're responsible for creating and maintaining an official VC:MP ethos. They have the same voting power as the Community Managers.

Community Managers

Permanent (unless voted out) members of the community responsible for creating official events, endorsing partner events, driving activity on the official forum.

Community Leaders

Temporary leaders who are brought in to help manage particular events or campaigns. E.g. There might be an official VC:MP Ladder event, and the community managers want some people to help manage it, so they bring on temporary Community Leaders.

Who?

The initial batch of Community Managers can be partially appointed, and partially voted in. It would have to be in discussion with Stormeus or Maxorator. Here is my suggestion for the appointees:

Community Admins
Morphine
Thijn
Charley
Klaus

Community Managers
aXXo
Krys
AngelofDeath
Aaron
Siezer
Wilson
jah (just kidding)
Gangstrag
Sevrin
Halchter
FaF
Xmair

How?

The only way for this to happen is to convince the developers that this is a good idea.

Vote agree on this post to voice your support, and anyone who has access to Stormeus or Maxorator, get this in front of their faces.

After 12 years of witnessing people complain about inactivity in VC:MP, I think it is time that take this issue into our own hands.

[Niko]

I'm up with you, VC:MP needs more propaganda for start to seen the community growing up like old times, one way for this and the most useful it's start to share and make videos for YouTube, for example, I moved on to another games or different platforms and when I mention vcmp they didn't know about his existence, and how works the gaming world today I would like to see the people making videos related to VC:MP just for advertising, It's an excelent idea from my side.

[Sean]

I was thinking of making a post about this topic, but it's good you made it now it'll basically have more reach  . It is true VCMP is losing playercount with time, and yes it is also true VU forums feel more happening than VCMP forums, but that's just how it has been for the past idk how many years. While the idea suggested is actually pretty helpful keeping the current playercount more interested, I hardly see it increasing the number of players in the community (it still is a pretty decent idea tho). There will always be a set of players hating on the current team (I ain't taking any names) and iscolating them and stuff.

I believe proper advertisement of VCMP could bring a change. Since Vice City is considered to be one of those nostalgic games, it has lovers all around the globe, but they're just not aware that something like VCMP exists. I've seen people in facebook groups be shocked when they find out multiplayer version of a game from 2003 exists and still has a playerbase.

I'll put in an example. [EAF]Han (and several other Argonath RPG players) create youtube videos of fun VCMP gameplays, and I tell you there have been several instamces where a player joins Argonath RPG being all, "hey I saw this on youtube, where's Han?" and stuff like this. There are plenty of people out there who'd stay here forever if they find out it exists. We just have to find those people.

VCMP is a unique game which has several interesting gamemodes. Gamemodes like A/D and CTF have capabilities to be a root of very huge competitive events. While on the other hand its RPG gamemodes can help keep players in for several other reasons.

In short, what I believe is we need a marketting strategy. Make proper fun entertaining videos of major events be it VCDC or EAD Championships. We as a community must support one another instead of forming sub groups within it and fighting each other. VCMP is a small community of less than 600 (including those who are active in forums). We need to support each other. See someone's youtube channel about VCMP? Support it! Notice an event? Spread its reach! Just help the community with what you can. There are currebtly two on going events (VCDC and EAD Champ'4) and they both are pretty fun to watch. Stream/record the matches and spread it! I personally got interested in VCMP when I saw a VCCT A/D match of ULK vs TLN in youtube, and I was like I want to do this. I fell in love with A/D gamemode right when I saw the video, and I tell you it wasn't even good quality in that version of VCMP. There are many talented lads who can do much better recordings (Han, Hype, iliasser and many more!). Just watch this and think, who'd not get entertained ny something like this?

Support the members of the community and that'll help ensure the community's long life.

[ripmemes]

there needs to be something new and catchy. a new update.

i dont know why stormeus is working on this all alone, he barely can keep up and we cant blame him,

he must recruit other developers to work on it.

one of the main causes for the playercount waning is the strict administration of VCMP.
literally gangstaras alone banned 100 players off one of the servers he administered. ( permanently )

ban times are too long, people get cocky when you get banned, and sometimes you get banned because you said something admins dont like, ( example: ferrari called kessu a "dictator" once, got permanently banned,  cheaters in ead get banned for lifetime with no chance to get unban) they lose interest.

imagine how many newbie players quit vcmp when they find they were banned for a month for something as silly as deathevading.

admins are sometimes careless, ( example: Weldone got banned for something someone else with a similar nickname did, only to be unbanned 3 months later and at admins's realisation that it was a wrongful ban )

in SAMP hackers get banned for no more than 120 minutes, and their servers filled with players up to 600 at the same time!

[Charley]

-

Agreed! More promo would be awesome. This can also be something that the Community Managers embolden. E.g. making an improved 'VC:MP Videos' community board with competitions and features. Also working with prominent videographers & marketers to make advertising campaigns for the mod. All your ideas would be bolstered if they were coordinated with official endorsement.

-

This is not something that can be centrally managed. That's for the community to work out itself.

[Sezar]

Opinion from a fellow community player

1.Newbies are more attracted to games like CSGO, GTA V, TC:RSS or Valorant. Why? Because of enhanced graphics and not-so-outdated bugs and maybe these are latest games. VCMP might have been a big thing back in 2010s (maybe) because it was latest. This is what 'time' is you can't do anything about.

2.Community's experienced or atleast players who knows how clan or vcmp works. They are like "You have your clan mate or good friend? Okay, don't interact with newbies and teach them how to play vcmp". Like instead of helping, they make sprees but not only spree but abuse those new players if they by any chance kills that prof player. You guys should try to interact with newbie so that he can get as same experience as you and then that newbie teach another newbie and cycle goes on and on.

In littlewhitey's, I have personally never seen any staff interacting with newbie in that closer way than p4t. It is not because he is my friend or interacts with me, no please don't assume that thanks. He tries his best to make that new player understand

I myself would also think myself some big OG so does any other MK, VU, SS, DU, RT or EAF members. We don't interact to any newbies because we are in a good clan but they ain't (our thoughts). I barely see anyone making an asset outta it. Getting them an asset and a clan might make them do the same. Newbies who even become assets becomes as same as any other clan members.

We should learn to settle the newbies first instead of promoting the game and then making a temporary herd which won't be significant tomorrow.

..

So you mean, let cheaters, intoxicant and death evaders play so that they does the same again and again? No sorry, I rather prefer quality over quantity.

Weldone's case is rare and I suppose that spread enough demerits to the staffs to decrease the server's player count as a punishment.

[ripmemes]

So you mean, let cheaters, intoxicant and death evaders play so that they does the same again and again? No sorry, I rather prefer quality over quantity.

Weldone's case is rare and I suppose that spread enough demerits to the staffs to decrease the server's player count as a punishment

VCMP is dying, and if you keep with this xenophobic like attitude then itll die in no time

Half of those "cheaters" are new to multiplayer and have their games modded,they jump into a server and theyre banned.

Ghiless got banned once for silent patch for 30 days in lws,he posted an unban appeal and it got denied.

You want to know the result unless you try ,there are a shitton of admins and figures in this community but they cant be arsed to maintain server order and decide to go for the laziest decisions to potentially avoid dealing with responsibilities ( like scrapping features )

Charley, VCMP has to change its nature,theres nothing you can do to attract more people because no wants to play this dead old game, you have to save the community and focus on renewing interest rather than trying because believe me i tried.

[krystianoo]

VCMP has no promotion.

Where do you even download VCMP 0.4 as a new player? From moddb? From maxorator's topic in the VCMP forum? How are you going to find it?

Once you have the browser, it redirects to a dead forum link - http://vicecitymultiplayer.com/forum/

VCMP's barrier of entry is too high.

The only newbie friendly servers is littlewhiteys, because it does everything to prevent the player from using glitches.

You see the most populated server (in the past) - RTV - you join it, you get killed by a guy crouching with molotovs or sliding on your screen. How? How on Earth do you do that?

Oh wait. You can't join it, because the system requires manual account approval due to the plague of cheaters in VCMP. Just like EAD has today. Because of cheaters.

VCMP has no maintenance.

The forum has gone down in the past, the masterlist has gone down in the past bringing playercount to staggering lows.

Glitches are abused and made part of daily in-game combat.

The last update was probably a year ago, if not more. There is no contact with the developers. The only active developer is AdTec_224 who, mind you, is not even originally a VCMP dev, but a LU dev. I thank the developers for all the work they have done.

Player market

Charley, as much as I agree with your idea, this is pretty hard to ignore. Where are you going to get these players from? All over the globe? Asia? We have this term 'cafer' for players who use gaming cafes in Pakistan to play. Even that's not enough.

In my honest opinion, even SAMP has playercount problems. Go in and you will see thousands of Russian roleplay servers that are most likely 90% of the total "players" active.

Separation

Finally, you have servers that promote separatism. You have Chinese-only servers that you can't play at because of lag, being unable to download files or just not understanding anything. I've seen some Hungarian-only servers. I've seen a Turkish-only server, but that one was filled with bots. You have groups that promote belonging to a certain nationality, all of those mentioned condone sitting in your own echo chamber without interacting with "different" people.

Conclusion

I believe that in the past, me and morphine discussed a similar idea. I think that there was a point in time when this genuinely would have helped, but I'm not sure if we're not past the point of "no return" already. Nonetheless since you've named me, I'm willing to help because at least then, I can say that I've tried.

If you searched 'Vice City Multiplayer' on Google, and found that forum, would you be interested to explore the mod and its community? Fuck no.

Agree.

[mairee]

1.Newbies are more attracted to games like CSGO, GTA V, TC:RSS or Valorant. Why? Because of enhanced graphics and not-so-outdated bugs and maybe these are latest games. VCMP might have been a big thing back in 2010s (maybe) because it was latest. This is what 'time' is you can't do anything about.

I completely disagree with the graphics part. SA has a pretty bad looking atmosphere as compared to VC. The best example in this regard is one of the world's most popular game, Minecraft. While it doesn't offer awesome graphics by default, players still enjoy it due to it's endless possibilities and it isn't even one of the "latest games", it's just updated frequently which is one of the values VCMP lacks.

[morphine]

hmm

[GoRcEE]

In DM servers, most of us will find out ppl ganging up and killing a player twice, what will the victim do?
Quit - oh its rage quit
Doesn't spawn - scared

When the gang trash talk like that, the player gets triggered and talks trash in return, which leads them being toxic and nothing else. What should we do? Understand players, divide your teams play differently. Duel with each others, if someone asks for some rounds even if you know he's not capable enough to fight well, don't deny his challenge, fight. Teach him his mistakes.
Toxicity is top issue in vcmp right now, player count is still second.

[Kessu]

ban times are too long, people get cocky when you get banned, and sometimes you get banned because you said something admins dont like, ( example: ferrari called kessu a "dictator" once, got permanently banned,  cheaters in ead get banned for lifetime with no chance to get unban) they lose interest.

Ban times are whatever server's owners decide. Got a problem? Leave, or build your own server with your own style.

I have never banned anyone for calling me a dictator FYI.

Cheaters do not deserve a second chance.

Each server has it's own set of rules and if one can not obey them or outright refuses to, why should that server be dealing with the player any longer?

We play this game to have fun and some of us have created a server where we can have fun within a set of rules that gives us the best chance to have fun. We will not miss the shitstains who wish to disrupt that.

[morphine]

ban times are too long, people get cocky when you get banned, and sometimes you get banned because you said something admins dont like, ( example: ferrari called kessu a "dictator" once, got permanently banned,  cheaters in ead get banned for lifetime with no chance to get unban) they lose interest.

Ban times are whatever server's owners decide. Got a problem? Leave, or build your own server with your own style.

I have never banned anyone for calling me a dictator FYI.

Cheaters do not deserve a second chance.

Each server has it's own set of rules and if one can not obey them or outright refuses to, why should that server be dealing with the player any longer?

We play this game to have fun and some of us have created a server where we can have fun within a set of rules that gives us the best chance to have fun. We will not miss the shitstains who wish to disrupt that.

you paint with words, my friend

[Charley]

To me, there's no point in complaining about problems we can't fix.

Can we make VC:MP look or feel better, as a game? No.

Can we get the devs to release an update? No.

Can we change the behaviour of existing VC:MP players? Not easily.

Can we stop servers from factionalising? No.

Can we stop cheaters forever? No.

The VC:MP forum probably has more unique visitors daily than any of our forums, including this one. They are people already vaguely interested in the idea of playing a multiplayer version of Vice City.

Can we capture the interest of those unique visitors, and convince them to stay? We stand a chance.

Even if we just convince 1 visitor to stay per day, within a year, that's a boost of more than 300 players to the community.

[ripmemes]

I wanted to allude to few reasons that made people lose interest over time, not saying if admins reaction are right or wrong.

one of which is the long ban times and strict rules, speaking of which I was refering to all servers, as all of them pretty much play the same because they often get administered by same people.

vcmp is not gta online, and so long ban times wouldn't really help, it is barely keeping up with player count and if this continues it'll just lose more players because not many join the game, and so it is important to save the community before thinking about bringing other people.

Admins, devs and moderators of all servers alike:

do you want a different outcome?

then try different solutions!!


we all want to have fun, if someone does a mistake, warn him, or ban him for short amount of time, if he does it again, ban him for a day or even a week, third time then you permanently ban him.

that's how samp is still alive, as xmair pointed out, even though SA has shitty and dirty brownish graphics and slow pace.