Not enough players!

[jfk003]

I quite enjoy freeroam for a laugh, but I feel very sorry for the people that put effort into these gamemodes and freeroam, which is what you do in single player, has taken over as a 24/7 thing! You can never find anywhere playing Interstate69.. in my mind, one of the most impressive custom gamemodes, with the choice of weapons and vehicles. I've got nothing against freeroam, I just wish it wouldn't take over a DeathMatch (that's the name folks!) mod, and leave some room for the people that want to do what the Mod was designed for.

I think everything is said here, I totally agree; it really sums up the situation.

Just to answer to this:

How on earth could the developers make the community like the way the gamemodes are being set up? They've provided the tools, its now up to the gamemode makers. All i can think of are SA elements such as casino/ammunation NPCs, the original modshop and stuff in that area to make it look more authentic. More GTA.

Its not killing MTA by creating less focused gameplay. Its reviving GTA.

First, we never said it was the devs's fault if there is only freeroam; they have done their job right as far as I know, so the "fault" really lies in the community (servers owners and players). Donb't turn us against the devs because we always defended them and we appreciate their work.

About "it's reviving GTA"...tell me how: with 3 top servers with approx. 20 players playing freeroam, and then nothing else ? It makes me wonder really

[Axis]

I think you guys should consider more "Free Roam" as simply FREE as it doesn't always mean that people just spawn cars and drives for nothing around.

Alot of Servers are kindof between FR and RP.

Some others are FR but because they are simply scripting and modding stuff.

Its more or less "Free For All" wich can be used for anything. I don't think that Free Roams are really what is Killing the game . I myself host a Free Roam server but its mostly because I spend most of my MTA Gametime scripting and trying stuff. Or running Hot Pursuits.

And quite frankly, I play MTA with a bunch of friends and one of our first reflex when we first tried the game, was to find a good Free Roam server (before hosting our own) because we wanted to be able to play together, test around and just mess around too.

[-XII-Wacko]

Well i guess you're all right: There need to be more diverse and advanced gamemodes, and those modes should get popular. Thats going to take some time though.

Now, another reason why MTA is not being received very well: It's too late.

Allow me to elaborate.

Back when San Andreas was released (or even before), two mods were announced: SA-MP and MTA:SA.

GTA:SA got out, and both teams started coding away. MTA:Race came out first, and was well received. It had the first acceptable gameplay and sync, and ofcourse the awesome map editor. A little while later though, SA-MP 0.1 got out. It had fully functional scripting, a bit better sync than MTA (come on now, you cant say MTA:Race had realistic collisions and wasnt jittery, be honest ) , supported 100 players, wasnt too crashy and had enough elements to be played endlessly. Later on 0.1 was replaced by 0.1b, 0.2, 0.2.1 and 0.2.2. Yet no sign of MTA:SA. Hints were made of an pending release, but it simply took too long.

Back to now: The SA-MP community is huge, theres a solid player base and more players are signing on every day. MTA is now out, and people aren't switching. Why?

I'll answer that question; It takes more than a qualitative slightly better mod to completely disband a community and have them switch to your software. MTA:SA is without doubt both echnically and functionally a bit better than SA-MP, but it lacks something thats really worth abandoning all your scripts, rollplay items, saved money and friends on SA-MP for, and switching over. Theres the QA team, a few scripters, a few players who never picked up SA-MP and a few players banned from SA-MP that play MTA.The majority of the GTA Multiplayer community has adopted and embraced SA-MP from the start and has only grown bigger and bigger. It wont be easy for a competing mod like MTA to make them drop it even if its a better game.

Like Linux vs. Windows: Linux is technically considered better, and yet 94% of the desktop PCs around the world run Windows. It was there when PC desktop usage was being adopted, and it's still there.

[Dark Dragon]

you cant compare mta and samp with windows and linux. windows is just easier for everyone to learn and quite often the developers of the software only supported windows, so its no wonder that windows dominates this market now.

actually you could compare the mode developers with the software developers, but in fact there are not many really different modes on samp. i cant say i know all of them, there are some good modes of course, but not more than mta. remember im talking about really different modes (and yes i mean modes with an aim.)

[-XII-Wacko]

you cant compare mta and samp with windows and linux. windows is just easier for everyone to learn and quite often the developers of the software only supported windows, so its no wonder that windows dominates this market now.

KDE is just as easy as windows, and a lot of Windows software has is linux equivalent/superior, but thats a whole diffrent discussion. Essentially, they're both OSes with basically the same functionality.

actually you could compare the mode developers with the software developers, but in fact there are not many really different modes on samp. i cant say i know all of them, there are some good modes of course, but not more than mta. remember im talking about really different modes (and yes i mean modes with an aim.)

You have no idea. Honestly.

Its a shame you're not really going into my point though.

[Ransom]

Back to now: The SA-MP community is huge, theres a solid player base and more players are signing on every day. MTA is now out, and people aren't switching. Why?

I'll answer that question; It takes more than a qualitative slightly better mod to completely disband a community and have them switch to your software. MTA:SA is without doubt both echnically and functionally a bit better than SA-MP, but it lacks something thats really worth abandoning all your scripts, rollplay items, saved money and friends on SA-MP for, and switching over. Theres the QA team, a few scripters, a few players who never picked up SA-MP and a few players banned from SA-MP that play MTA.

Its certainly a gross understatement to write off MTA as a "slightly better mod" compared to SA-MP. It provides so much more functionality. I can't see SA-MP making a game like stealth or interstate 69. Even yet, those are just stepping stones of what could be. I think your only really valid point, as I mentioned on page two, is that SA-MP came a lot earlier and it has a freeroam/rpg element to it that everyone is used to.

You assume to much if you think that nobody on QA team played SA-MP. If you want my honest opinion I tried several servers and got bored after 5 to 10 minutes. Like jfk and dragon I am a more competitive person. I like fighting in areas where it doesn't take 10 minutes to find the next fight (wherein its probably some guy who's gonna flee who doesn't like fighting). I found the combat in SA-MP pretty unsynced when around a group of players and then I would just get a crash randomly every now and then. Now I'm not preaching that MTA is flawless but I saw nothing special that SA-MP was providing. You can't say things like anti-cheat are not a problem simply because SA-MP did not have it. It was a monopoly at the time, there was no choice for mp. There was no alternative. GTA:Rumble barely worked but it attracted people. SA-MP got firstmover advantage and that is huge. That truly was an MTA mistake. The cost of extensive control over the game was bugs constantly introduced and a feeling that everything had to be picture perfect. Its not even MTASA:DM anymore. It should be called MTASA:SDK. As far as the 0S comparison goes, an OS is quite harsh. I am easily switched over to another software, say IE to Firefox, providing it convinces me its good enough. I think MTA has the ability to accomplish that.

Anyways, I think everything is being oversimplified as far as only the gamemodes being the problem. As I mentioned before we know the lack of certain features like parachutes and controller support (which SA-MP has, again forcing it to be standard), bugs, no anti cheat, etc. are causing issues. 500 MTA vs. 4000 SA-MP isn't that bad for the time being. Its only been two months and theres still lots of time before GTAIV pc. Currently there are 52,257 registered accounts for MTA. That alone proves that MTA is not "out" of the picture yet.

This is a two pronged attack here, hopefully the community can learn some good scripting and come out with some nice gamemodes (with experienced QA scripter help). Meanwhile, we'll do our best to patch up the problems (fyi controller support is planned and parachutes are being worked on).

[-XII-Wacko]

Back to now: The SA-MP community is huge, theres a solid player base and more players are signing on every day. MTA is now out, and people aren't switching. Why?

I'll answer that question; It takes more than a qualitative slightly better mod to completely disband a community and have them switch to your software. MTA:SA is without doubt both echnically and functionally a bit better than SA-MP, but it lacks something thats really worth abandoning all your scripts, rollplay items, saved money and friends on SA-MP for, and switching over. Theres the QA team, a few scripters, a few players who never picked up SA-MP and a few players banned from SA-MP that play MTA.

Its certainly a gross understatement to write off MTA as a "slightly better mod" compared to SA-MP. It provides so much more functionality. I can't see SA-MP making a game like stealth or interstate 69. Even yet, those are just stepping stones of what could be. I think your only really valid point, as I mentioned on page two, is that SA-MP came a lot earlier and it has a freeroam/rpg element to it that everyone is used to.

A lot more functionality, yes. A lot more useful functionality? That's open for discussion. Also, MTA promised to be the "revolution" with big marketing language and hype-feeding in every blog post posted. People thought it'd be perfect, which its not by far. Hell, even i thought SA-MP would be screwed if MTA was as good as it looked in the videos. Bummer it wasn't. Back to the point: Maybe all of the functionality hasnt really been discovered by the scripters or has been well-crafted into a good GM.

You assume to much if you think that nobody on QA team played SA-MP. If you want my honest opinion I tried several servers and got bored after 5 to 10 minutes. Like jfk and dragon I am a more competitive person. I like fighting in areas where it doesn't take 10 minutes to find the next fight (wherein its probably some guy who's gonna flee who doesn't like fighting). I found the combat in SA-MP pretty unsynced when around a group of players and then I would just get a crash randomly every now and then. Now I'm not preaching that MTA is flawless but I saw nothing special that SA-MP was providing.

You can't say things like anti-cheat are not a problem simply because SA-MP did not have it. It was a monopoly at the time, there was no choice for mp. There was no alternative. GTA:Rumble barely worked but it attracted people. SA-MP got firstmover advantage and that is huge. That truly was an MTA mistake. The cost of extensive control over the game was bugs constantly introduced and a feeling that everything had to be picture perfect. Its not even MTASA:DM anymore. It should be called MTASA:SDK. As far as the 0S comparison goes, an OS is quite harsh. I am easily switched over to another software, say IE to Firefox, providing it convinces me its good enough. I think MTA has the ability to accomplish that.

SA-MP doesnt have the aim to be the best synced multiplayer there is. It's aim is to have an acceptable sync at high player counts, and still not use a ton of bandwidth. And on a sidenote SA-MP DID have an anti-cheat, and a very effective one too. Too bad it got dropped. As far as i know, a hack never lasted longer than two weeks on it. All there is now is basic protection. filterscripts usually take care of most of the common cheats though (godmode, weaponhack, speedhack etc.), so a proper server admin has nothing to worry about.

Switching browsers isn't really the same as switching games. Browsers are pieces of software that essentially provide the same result, but with a diffrent frontend whereas mods/games have communities and in this case scripting files attached to them. It's a bit harder to drop all of that.

Anyways, I think everything is being oversimplified as far as only the gamemodes being the problem. As I mentioned before we know the lack of certain features like parachutes and controller support (which SA-MP has, again forcing it to be standard), bugs, no anti cheat, etc. are causing issues. 500 MTA vs. 4000 SA-MP isn't that bad for the time being. Its only been two months and theres still lots of time before GTAIV pc. Currently there are 52,257 registered accounts for MTA. That alone proves that MTA is not "out" of the picture yet.

I'd say MTA has all the features it needs to be succesful: An anticheat can be scripted, parachutes aren't that big of a deal and controller supports only affects that small group that plays with a controller. That can't be the reason that not even a thousand players can be arsed to drag their ass onto MTA at the same time.

Another sidenote: SA-MP has already peaked at 8500 players and it usually gets near that, so your figures regarding SA-MP are wrong. 52,257 registred players isnt a lot. SA-MP has been downloaded millions of times, and thats just the official mirrors. Provided 10% of the downloads turn into active players (conservative guess), that comes down to 100,000 active SA-MP players.

This is a two pronged attack here, hopefully the community can learn some good scripting and come out with some nice gamemodes (with experienced QA scripter help). Meanwhile, we'll do our best to patch up the problems (fyi controller support is planned and parachutes are being worked on).

I can only hope for the best .

I dont want this discussion to change into an SA-MP vs. MTA discussion though. Too bad you're sort of pointing it in that direction (i'm not saying i'm innocent). I only mentioned it because i think SA-MP is a big factor in why MTA isnt crowded (yet?).

[Ransom]

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I don't understand how you can type huge rants about how SA-MP is 'in' and MTA is "out", and yet you can blame me for starting a MTA vs. SA-MP discussion. You even admitted that your opinion is severely biased towards supporting SA-MP, as you are part of SA-MP development. I make one post with some critique to your SA-MP rants and suddenly I'm the bad guy. If you can't accept even the slightest criticism of SA-MP then maybe you shouldn't be here discussing it (speaking of which, that appears to be the only reason you are here besides a few 2005 posts, some of which blatantly slandered MTA 0.5). I don't think any of us here agree with your opinion that everyone needs to rush over to SA-MP and forget about MTA because SA-MP has been released longer and thus, has a larger player count at the moment.

We are all well aware of the existence of SA-MP and that it has a large player count because it released years ago, but that does not mean it is the death of MTA. As you said, MTA is not as great as the videos made it appear. Some problems were introduced that need to be fixed, but it is a development preview and that is to be expected. Really, its just a "release in progress" just like SA-MP was, except theres much more involved because of extensive functionality. Theres plenty of time for development both on scripts and fixing the flaws. I don't see any figures about millions of SA-MP downloads, but even if so, it has been out for years. MTA has been out for two months. i see no evidence that points to SA-MP being a cancer to MTA. Time will tell what happens.

Anyhow, I'm ending this ranting about SA-MP with this post. The purpose of this topic was not to make long rants about how 'SA-MP has single-handedly defeated MTA by releasing earlier and there is no hope for MTA'. Theres quite a nice outline of issues on the first few pages (which includes SA-MP's existence as a factor but not the sole reason). However, apparently that is your position and if so then you need to go to the SA-MP forums rather than advertise here about why everyone should consider MTA as dead and go play SA-MP because it is "too late". There'll be no more trolling here.

[Azu]

I'm just wating for the map editor. I've gotten bored of playing it.

[Woovie]

Go Ransom. Wonderful post. I think it is rather ridiculous that anyone from SA-MP is here unless they actually play MTA, which would be highly doubtable.

[Guest]

Go Ransom. Wonderful post. I think it is rather ridiculous that anyone from SA-MP is here unless they actually play MTA, which would be highly doubtable.

I actually tried SA-MP before i joined here. Found this much better

[Gamesnert]

Go Ransom. Wonderful post. I think it is rather ridiculous that anyone from SA-MP is here unless they actually play MTA, which would be highly doubtable.

I actually tried SA-MP before i joined here. Found this much better

Same, was part of a SAMP roleplay server until I tried MTA once. Never been on that server since that day... ^^

[Dark Dragon]

force all sa:mp players to play mta for 1 hour and only 1/3 of them will go back to sa:mp

unfortunately it seems like sa:mp players don't want to see that mta has much more to offer than sa:mp will offer in 10 years

[Michael_Sund]

I'd be really happy if MTA came before SA-MP then it would be more famous and SA-MP

MTA deserves to be more famous as it got the lovely GUI

This means that i like MTA more than SA-MP: MTA>SA-MP

[Gamesnert]

Well, main reason for some is that MTA "lags" heavily for some... Wasn't this being solved in DP3..?

Anyway, it does seem that SA:MP just allows much more objects with less lag. But that might be just my experience. This difference is especially visible when having a lot of vehicles. I remember SA:MP servers having a lot of vehicles, so that might be a problem getting those here...

So far, this has lead to more "serious" servers on MTA. Although so it seems. Since some servers just want to spam objects, ramps etc., they see the lag as a serious obstacle. If this is being tracked down and fixed, then we should expect a good flow of players (and maybe servers) coming here. (although we have enough servers already I guess... )

[DiSaMe]

Anyway, it does seem that SA:MP just allows much more objects with less lag. But that might be just my experience. This difference is especially visible when having a lot of vehicles. I remember SA:MP servers having a lot of vehicles, so that might be a problem getting those here...

Of course, how could SA-MP lag with incredibly big number of desynced vehicles And MTA won't be always unpopular just because release date. Release date only made MTA less popular than SA-MP for a short while. Everything will change with time.

[Gamesnert]

Anyway, it does seem that SA:MP just allows much more objects with less lag. But that might be just my experience. This difference is especially visible when having a lot of vehicles. I remember SA:MP servers having a lot of vehicles, so that might be a problem getting those here...

Of course, how could SA-MP lag with incredibly big number of desynced vehicles And MTA won't be always unpopular just because release date. Release date only made MTA less popular than SA-MP for a short while. Everything will change with time.

I know, that's why I didn't say anything about any release dates.

Anyway, it's not only about the desynch what makes MTA slower I guess. It seems to eat more specs of your PC. I dunno why, desynch might be the reason, but I think there's more...

[Dark Dragon]

maybe because it's much more stable and doesn't crash every 5 minutes?

[Gamesnert]

maybe because it's much more stable and doesn't crash every 5 minutes?

Neither SA:MP or MTA crashed every 5 min here... SA:MP crashed alot more often though.

[Dark Dragon]

more often than mta or more often than every 5 minutes?

[Gamesnert]

more often than mta or more often than every 5 minutes?

Lol than MTA actually, but before I quit some did say something about 20 crashes per day...

[Scarface]

Well ill just get this straight crashes 24/7, so unstable that i cant even enter a server, soo much ping and obviously desynchronized!

[Dark Dragon]

well i haven't played sa:mp since mta dm dp1 came out but when i tried it today it was like a bad joke, everything appearing and disappearing all the time, killing people nearly impossible... i mean, i played gta rumble and sa:mp really makes this piece of crap (sorry jax) look good

[Gamesnert]

Still some think about it otherwise... I wonder why..? (except for the lag, the synch and extra functions make up for it anyway)

[Scarface]

Still some think about it otherwise... I wonder why..? (except for the lag, the synch and extra functions make up for it anyway)

mostly the players and its rich in very good servers/scripters , th problem is most dont feel like learning lua, this will change with DP3, they could use any language