Hello @Arran I won't pretend to be an expert of player activity for the whole server because my scope is limited in that I never play as a cop or a civilian. I don't know what is the minds of those players, but this post will include something related to the group system that might work for those factions. On the other hand, I know EXACTLY what is in the minds of criminal players and they represent a big chunk of the population.
My day
Well, as you know, I'm the group leader of a crack criminal group. I work with player activity in my group every single day. Here is what I do and it works:
Typical day for me:
- I log in and say hello (socializing with members and leadership presence is important for my members (or else they leave))
- Members start to SMS me their problems and I help them (or else the problems get too big for them and they leave).
- I invite more members to the group until I reach my invite limit (Members need other active players in the group to play with.)
- When things quiet down I start updating points (The point system I created (and managed for months now) encourages players to be active every day and play CIT.)
- I host an activity, preferably turfing (because the members need stuff to do and turfing is in the hearts of every criminal.)
- I kick inactive players (to free myself from the "invite limit roof") and invite active players (who started SMSing me and begging me to join because they see my group is turfing.)
- I let players have free time and rest when we are done turfing. I continue to socialize with members.
Throughout the day I take screenshots of the group members list in F6 at different intervals. The next day I look at those screenshots to determine who was active enough and I give them 1 point (in my Excel spreadsheet) for contributing to the group that day. I update the F6 info with a "point standings" and promote the players that have reached enough points for a promotion (promotions at intervals of 5 points(== 5 active days)).
"CIT life"
The CIT server experience is all about dreams that motivate players to keep on playing. I will list a few common dreams:
- Joining a pro group
- Being promoted to a high rank in your group
- Getting a group subboard or base
- Becoming a criminal boss or police chief
- Becoming a CIT staff member
- Becoming high level in a civilian job
- Buying an expensive house or CITy zone
- Getting a skin or car shader
- and much more...
There are also things that people do to enjoy their time when they are not working to reach their goals/dreams. These activites decrease stress and replenish energy to go after the dream/goal.
- Talking with friends, group members or main chats
- Driving around
- Turfing or killing people (it feels good to be successful and kill people, which is why it's so popular)
- Trolling
- Building CITy zone
- Some people are relaxed by civilian work
- Other dubious general activites (criminal events, police work, etc.. (some people are relaxed by it, others are not)
Conclusion and feedback
There are 3 things that I want you to take with you from this post.
- Script an automatic point giving system (read documentation below)
- Create more cool CIT dreams for people to achieve
- Create more fun activities
Automatic poing giving system
(documentation)
I cannot think of anything that will have a bigger or more global impact on directly forcing server activity/population to rise than this. It has had the biggest effect for me in my criminal group and there is no reason why it won't work for all groups on CIT. Let's call the new system:
Group loyaltyLogic:The script reads and reacts to time spent online for every group member.
It adds 1 Group Loyalty point to each player that has spent 90 minutes in game.
- This point will only be added if it is more than 18 hours since that player last got a point.
Group loyalty points are deleted when the player is no longer in the group.
Staff members cannot add/remove group loyalty points.
The points are displayed in the F6 members list and can be arranged in ascending/descending order.
The effect of this:- Group staff members can use group loyalty points to help them decide if a particular member deserves to be promoted.
- Group members will compete with each other for being loyal (having more points than others/being better than others) and good members (fear of getting kicked).This will strengthen all groups, decrease ganghopping and thereby create more long lasting friendships inside groups, which benefits the server because people will play more when they play together with people that they know. People don't like to play with randoms whom they don't know.
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All groups on CIT will be affected by this and that means you strongly encourage players to play on our server.
- Less popular, weak, new groups will be worse off (at first) because they will have a smaller pool of players to invite. This will force them to accept shit players with bad stats (whom they normally wouldn't accept). That is good for these players who will stay loyal to those groups that take them in and develop their skills. This will eventually make those players interesting for better groups to recruit, but the group loyalty will hold back members from their leaving their original group. This should help to reduce the gap between pro and nab groups, so they are actually not worse off.
Expansion: Event Activity
Introduction: Group staff with the right permission level can grant players 1 event activity point every 2 hours.
Logic: One more column in F6 members list with ascending/descending order of Event Activity points for each member.
New button in members list with functionality of: +1 Event Activity point
- It is not possible to take points away from members (except kicking them)
Players that leave the group will have all their accumulated Event Activity points deleted (purged from database (except history))
The +1 Event Activity point function will add a line in group history with information of who gave the point and who received the point.
The effect:- Motivating players to be an active part of the group and its' activities. Players will come and line up and wait for groupstaff to give them 1 point for joining the group activity.
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Very important: Motivating lesser group staff to create events for the members because group bosses can see in group history that a staff made a training and he can then reward that group staff with a promotion for making events for the members. I would love it if you created a Staff Point system also, but that could be done down the line if this is already a lot. Just keep in mind that groups constantly die because higher ranked staff members (not boss rank) don't get motivated to continue working (they don't get promoted enough and they don't know what to do and bosses have no way to know if a staff is active or slacking, so promotions are based on random asslicking, etc..) Bosses themselves are too busy or tired to make events for members and this is how groups die and also a reason why some people play CIT less or ganghop to a more active group. So a staff point column would be very useful.
- The Group Loyalty points encouraged players to be online every day at least 90 minutes. This one encourages them not to be AFK during those 90 minutes and encourages them to keep playing for 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 hours (all the day) to get more and more points. I doubt many groups would make events non-stop, but the average would be 2 events per day (==+4 hours (which is a normal play day)) and I think it will stabilize the average of 2 events per day and increase to beyond 2 with a Staff Point system.
- Players will compete for who is an active and helpful member. Group staff can determine who they should promote in a better way.
- Players will have more fun in their group and be motivated to play together instead of doing random solo/antisocial things like criminal events or civilian work. This will create great times for members and they will form long lasting memories. It will encourage them to keep playing CIT and even if their group dies at some point. It will give them memories that they can feel nostalgic about and re-create when they join another group or create a new group.
Group Staff point system
I would write this, but I already touched on it in the text above. I don't have more time now because I must go (for a few days due to real life) and I want to post what I have. I think you get the picture anyway.
Without knowing, I think these are simple programming/scripting tasks with what I consider would be a MASSIVE effect. Adding CITy back definitely spiked the server in population and it's still a very rich aspect of CIT. I use CITy every single day. Well, this would create another huge population spike, but it would also raise the bottom and reinforce the population, I believe. These points will improve the group system and affect players every single day. It would strongly encourage (almost force) players to be active a lot every day.
Finally, I want to say that I think you would not accomplish anything major by trying to solve what people think is wrong with the server and why they are leaving. It's so difficult and now there are so many pages of random rants. I will probably never read any of it and I am happy not to be you having to script for this. There are simply too many opinions. They can be right opinions or wrong ones. Anyway, I think it would be better
to enhance the server experience. This post and the simple suggestions I've posted represent a lot of experience from my work with members in IVANs Family and when I was in CAMORRA. It will work. Kids simply love points, rankings and feeling better and more awesome than others. And this system actually gives them a way to WORK to be BETTER and BE MORE AWESOME. And they must play CIT a lot to be that, so that's what they will do. Buying a skin makes you cooler than others and look how well they are selling. Uniqueness is what it's all about. Uniqueness, work, achievements, rewards and good systems to facilitate that. That's what it's all about!
Peace,IVAN
