MTA and SAMP

[Malice]

I am baffled by this. Could someone please explain? How does SAMP have more players than MTA? Maybe my server browser is broken or something. MTA is clearly the better mod. Thanks in advance.

[Mr.Hankey]

Think of it as someone who just recently got GTA:SA and is now searching google if there's a multiplayer. He will probably enter "GTA san andreas multiplayer".

MTA is first mentioned at the second result page whereas sa-mp has the first entry...

Another thing is that the first version of sa-mp (no matter how crappy it was) already got released a couple of years before MTA deathmatch and thus already had a noticeable userbase back then.

[robhol]

I've wondered about the same, and after a bit of thought, I've come up with the following things:

As Mr.Hankey mentioned, the name "San Andreas MultiPlayer" is a very obvious, but still quite clever choice of name, since it's exactly what most people will want to google. SA-MP is the #1 hit, while MTA is a bit further down the list.

SA-MP was released a lot earlier and MTA:SA has had few releases and a long time between them. Even though MTA has better sync and TONS more features, scripting functions etc., an early start proved very useful here.

The SA-MP community is rather hostile towards MTA (and to a degree the same is true here, but nowhere near as extremely), and its staff and management even more so. Its moderators patrol the forum like 24/7 so they can make sure to delete any post or topic that mentions MTA in a favorable light and ban whoever posted it, usually on a one-strike basis.

Most of the SA-MP players are very ignorant when it comes to MTA and are often/usually very poorly informed: some don't know about its existence at all, some think it's still only Race, some aren't even interested in trying, some find ridiculous excuses not to try it.

Player counts. While this seems odd at first glance, if you take a look at it, you'll see that it's kind of an "evil circle" - people don't switch from SA-MP to MTA for a lot of (usually bad) reasons, but probably the most important is that people are used to having hundreds of players in a server, and don't want to switch to a mod with less players and less servers. No "converts" means no reason for others to convert, so it's kind of deadlocked until MTA gets more players. There is also a rather poor selection of servers these days - few original scripts, few players, most of the servers are just running the same crappy no-aim freeroam modes.

I don't even play much at all recently, because I like DM, freeroam gets incredibly boring, and I've never seen the point of RP. The two only "proper" DM servers I know of are now deserted (FMJ's) or shut down.

[madis]

I just got a great idea. A simple, nice looking comparison table would be a nice feature on MTA site (well, why not knock out competition , a lot of applications and services advertise with this sort of feature lists). Of course it should be radical and honest, showing all negative sides of MTA as well.

Also, I think (based of no facts) that main user base of sa-mp is younger (and by younger I mean children), and too young user-base isn't always good. Knock that thought out if you know I'm wrong (about % of ~10 year players OR my understanding of the behavior of people in that age).

[robhol]

Yeah, but the MTA player base aren't exactly gray-haired old men either. In that respect, I don't think the differences between the player bases are that great.

And as for the comparison table.. it seems like a decent idea (in fact, I started on one a while ago) but once you think about it, it really isn't such a good idea - after all, the ones we want to look at it will be the ones who are most likely to refuse to, or dismiss it without any valid reason.

[Malice]

There is also a rather poor selection of servers these days - few original scripts, few players, most of the servers are just running the same crappy no-aim freeroam modes.

That is another thing I found quite odd. As a PAWN Scripter I have taken a glance at all the Lua functions, and there are MANY things that can be done. I have even been told by someone that MTA's graphics are terrible, when the opposite is true. It just goes to show the misconceptions. Maybe PC Specs is another reason? Hopefully, MTA will get more players. Maybe all it takes is a good server!

[Dark Dragon]

the truth is. we all know why sa mp had more players. it was released earlier. but no one can really tell why they still have more players. even a chimpanzee could (under fair conditions) make out that mta is clearly better in nearly any aspect.

most of the servers are just running the same crappy no-aim freeroam modes.

while mta at least has proper gamemodes theres nearly no variety on sa mp. all servers seem very similar to all the others. i've only seen very vers few server with a proper concept/objective other than hanging around and earning money by killing others.

when you ask a sa mp player why he dislikes mta you will mostly get an answer you wouldn't have expected from a 5 year old. "its only race"; "ugly chatbox"; "lua is too hard to script"; "its sync is bad" (personal WTF-favourite)

while theres tons of reasons to switch to mta i only see very few valid ones to stick with sa mp

-yes they have more players (which will probably never hcange if they keep this as a reason not to switch)

-native gta functions like the tuning garage, ammunations interior-warps and the casino are not availalbe (but are instead re written by the community in an usually more dynamic, better way)

-some really crappy pcs can't handle it because they can barely handle sa mp with nearly no sync at all (yes mta consumes more performance (guess why??))

valid (but stupid reasons)

mission skins

driveby enabled by default (actually not even valid)

BEAUTIFUL CHATBOX!!! (rofl)

i could now list the advantages of mta but i guess i would hit the forums character limit per post

[robhol]

"its only race"; "ugly chatbox"; "lua is too hard to script"; "its sync is bad"

(Son, I am disappoint. )

Well, that's kind of what I mean about hostility. Some people are just going in, dead bent on hating MTA, and keep making pathetic excuses like those. The rest are being kept in the dark, as it were, because there's actually an official policy not to discuss MTA unless it's groundless flaming.

As for variety, I have to admit that at the moment I feel MTA is depressingly boring, and this has nothing to do with SA-MP at all. Maybe I miss proper deathmatch servers AND people to play on said servers with, maybe I'm just a bit tired of the whole thing now.

[DiSaMe]

Player counts. While this seems odd at first glance, if you take a look at it, you'll see that it's kind of an "evil circle" - people don't switch from SA-MP to MTA for a lot of (usually bad) reasons, but probably the most important is that people are used to having hundreds of players in a server, and don't want to switch to a mod with less players and less servers. No "converts" means no reason for others to convert, so it's kind of deadlocked until MTA gets more players. There is also a rather poor selection of servers these days - few original scripts, few players, most of the servers are just running the same crappy no-aim freeroam modes.

This is what I often talk about in a short way: SA-MP players hate MTA because they don't play it On the other hand, this seems to be an advantage of MTA because that makes it have players who have their personal opinion.

[robhol]

Slim comfort, to be honest. At this point, MTA doesn't need "visionary players", regular ones will help a lot.

The main priorities should be removing bugs, making some proper servers in a variety of mods, instead of having 99% of all servers be the same default crap you get thrown after you while installing MTA.

As for players, I guess people could "invite" anyone they knew.

If I were to look optimistically at it, I would think the SA-MP -> MTA switch is something that's "waiting to happen" for a lot of people, all that's needed to get the reaction going is some pluton- err, some more players. As they switch, that causes a few friends and contacts here, a clan there, to see MTA in a less hostile light - and maybe make the move themselves. As this is happening, the main argument of "not enough players " would also be reduced. Then we could get kind of a snowball effect going.

Of course, this seems optimistic to the point of idiocy, but it would be nice, wouldn't it?

[Malice]

We should get an open source gamemode going . That will surely be epic.

[eKo]

Look SAMP got more programmers and they has more experience,so they got more players then MTA.Lua is new language and there is no a lot of programmers of Lua,and they don't has much experience.So thats why MTA have less players then SAMP

[Dark Dragon]

they has more experience

i'm sure they do... not

Lua is new language

1993, FYI pawn was first released 1998 and was rarely used before the name change and version 3 which has been released 2005 (it still is rarely used tough)

/offtopic world of warcraft UI add-ons are written in lua for example.

no a lot of programmers

quality instead of quantity... well at least the few chosen ones can speak proper english

don't has much experience

if this was true i'd like to know what an awesome pawn scriper was able to do with lua (mta's power)... because we (the noobs) were already able to create truly epic scripts.

[robhol]

Look SAMP got more programmers and they has more experience,so they got more players then MTA.Lua is new language and there is no a lot of programmers of Lua,and they don't has much experience.So thats why MTA have less players then SAMP

Wrong, wrong, wrong. There's not actually one remotely plausible statement in this whole sorry post.

SA-MP has ONE programmer (at least it did the last time I checked, correct me if I'm wrong,) because that programmer has alienated all the other programmers. I also really doubt Kye has more experience than most MTA developers. Lua is not a "new language", it was created in 1993 and is therefore actually OLDER than SA-MP's Pawn, which appeared 5 years later, in 1998.

I don't know if you missed it or ignored it, but there's a fairly good list of more plausible explanations a bit earlier in the topic.

[Dark Dragon]

i guess by programmers he means scripers.

[darkdreamingdan]

Look SAMP got more programmers and they has more experience,so they got more players then MTA.Lua is new language and there is no a lot of programmers of Lua,and they don't has much experience.So thats why MTA have less players then SAMP

Please look at a primary website used to analyse programming languages: http://langpop.com/

Note, that this includes all programming languages, even used to create applications - not embedded languages like Lua or Pawn meant for scripting. In essense, it analyses the most widely used programming languages using objective tests. Do you see Pawn anywhere in that list?

As Dragon has said, Lua has been around since 1993, much before 1998. Lua scripters have a lot of experience - being an old, established language it has strong documentation and a vibrant community with hundreds of modules already built for it. In the scope of MTA, there's plenty of experienced scripters already with us. I urge you to take a look at our youtube channel to see for yourself: http://youtube.com/mtaqa. Not to mention the resources that are already packed with MTA are a testament, notably the Map Editor.

I'm hoping that you meant that not many GTA scene players are accustomed to Lua. That might be true, but all of your statements are simply not true. Without being eccentric, Lua is simply a superior language. Ask any neutral and i'm sure they would agree.

[djanzy]

Can't you modify the MTA site in a way that it shows higher in google?

Currently if I google "GTA san andreas multiplayer" The Mta site is in sixth place.

I think stuff like this helps you to rank higher (it's from the samp site ):

[eAi]

Google ignores meta tags - at least, they claim to.

[=RM=Mario]

Sa-mp wouln't have all those stunt servers without MTA,Tho all Sa-mp players say mta sucks and has bad sync,

why are they using mtas map editor?

They should just stop using MTAs map editor and use thier own crap commands to map thier objects.

They know MTA is better,they just stick with sa-mp because the player count.

Well, that's kind of what I mean about hostility. Some people are just going in, dead bent on hating MTA, and keep making pathetic excuses like those. The rest are being kept in the dark, as it were, because there's actually an official policy not to discuss MTA unless it's groundless flaming.

Yeah sure they have a rule not to discuss mta,but when they talk about MTA's map editor its ok?

They have MTA written all over thier fourms

[robhol]

I know, they're being ridiculously two-faced about the whole deal. As I said, they don't seem to mind MTA being mentioned as long as it's some stupid lie about it having "bad sync" (rofl, the irony is killing me) or a recipe for "stealing" the use of the map editor.

Hypocritical though it may be, it's still worth a small note of thanks, since I probably wouldn't have discovered MTA if it weren't for the odd comment or two about it being thrown around on the SA-MP forums. I guess I'm not the only one who discovered it in that way.

[madis]

Only way to rank up MTA on Google is to link it in a well-ranked sites. I should add a link to it on my site (Google rank 5/10), though I need to make up some good reason to fit it in.

[Dark Dragon]

googles relevance calculating method is constantly changed to ensure it is not abused by website owners who want their page to be on the top ranks.

[Blokker_1999]

Would also like to point out 1 thing. You can not compare playercounts directly. When you want to compare playercounts you got to make sure you use the same system for both mods. In this case http://www.game-monitor.com can provide stats for both mods and then you can see that the gap is a bit smaller compared to when you compare the number from the sa-mp site with the number from our server browser.

btw, nice fair discussion here

[Mul_Tsafe]

MTA is more stable than sa-mp 0.3

[eKo]

Ok ok i get it

[Strika]

A lot of sa-mp players are still playing it because either they're addicted or they played it for a long time, and see no reason to quit. Despite the sync in sa-mp, SA-MP's deathmatch gameplay is somehow more interesting. SA-MP has the servers that is players long time favourited, when mta doesnt have the same servers. Some cant even play mta because it lags for them, pc problem.

But then MTA has its own goods, and likes of people's.

Im no fanboi (used to be), just saying my opinion. I played sa-mp for 2 years and moved to mta recently. And sometimes I still play sa-mp, I still find it interesting. Also the new version attracted a lot of people for it, as it was expected good but I myself don't like it.

There could be a list of reasons whys that and whys that, but thats based on opinions and not so much on facts anyways.