[2016] A Year in Recap and Season Greetings

[jhxp]

Hi there.

Oh, what is that? The holidays are here again? Yep, it looks like they are, so that means the usual stuff. We are going to give you guys & gals a heads up on what has been happening in MTA's world this whole year. And if you are one of those well informed types who does not need a recap, you still might want to give this post a read, as there will be more than that later on!

 

2016 in Recap

• Near the end of January, we released a bugfix release for MTA:SA 1.5.x - Multi Theft Auto: San Andreas 1.5.2. Among a few other things, that version had and improved the server app compatibility for Linux server hosters and fixed some desync issues.

• In July, we started offering a new way of promotion for server owners who wanted to gain more players quickly. Namely, one of the top positions in the ingame server browser for a week in an exchange for a small fee. We felt it was a good way to not only ensure that our Project's financial needs are balanced, but also to allow some smaller but ambitious servers to try and get the player base they were always seeking for.

• In August and September, we made significant changes to our forums, including a switch to a new forum software. There were a bunch of issues found afterwards (such as keeping the users login states), but we managed to fix most of them.

• Following that, we were featured in an article on the Rock Paper Shotgun, which was pondering the popularity of multiplayer mods for GTASA, even long after its original release. You can find the full article on the RPS website.

• And finally, on 20th of October, Multi Theft Auto: San Andreas 1.5.3 was released. This was a large release that could as well have been labelled as a next major release, but was not as it was still compatible with the 1.5 series.

 

 

A bunch of interesting MTA:SA-related YouTube videos from this year

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Current player counts and version fragmentation statistics

Type	Amount of players	Date / Time
Recent peak number of concurrent unique players	27111 players	2016.12.23 (at 17.30 GMT)
Highest recorded number of concurrent unique players	27111 players	2016.12.23 (at 17.30 GMT)
Recent number of daily unique players	124981 players	2016.12.23 (Friday)
Highest recorded number of daily unique players	142785 players	2016.09.04 (Sunday)
Recent number of monthly unique players	554757 players	November, 2016
Highest recorded number of monthly unique players	626167 players	August, 2016

Yes, to our surprise, there was a new concurrent unique player count record set literally on the day we were gathering these stats for you.

 

MTA:SA Version or series	Percentage of players using that version or series as of 23rd of December, 2016
1.5.3	95.20%
1.5.2 1.5.1 1.5	3.60% 0.09% 0.09%
1.4.x	0.67%
1.3.x	0.28%
1.0.x + 1.1.x + 1.2.x	0.07%

It looks like more people decided to use newer versions of the mod than the last year.

 

***

As for the future, we have been working on the next release, which will contain mostly bugfixes and compatibility tweaks. However, we did some work on new features as well, such as Custom Train Tracks, which we hope to be finished soon.

We also want to look into improving streaming, raising the limits and making it possible to add new IDs for things, but this will be tricky. Nonetheless, it would be great to see those features working in MTA:SA one day as, for example, they would allow server owners to use bigger and better custom maps with new vehicles working correctly for all players.

That's it for now.
Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for 2017 from the MTA Team!

[Mega9]

Another great year has come to an end. Kudos to everyone involved and responsible for making MTA what it is today.

Edited December 24, 2016 by Mega9

[Blast3r]

Awww Unit 23's video didn't appear on this year's recap as it did last last year (7Precint aka SAPD:FR online now)

 

I love the fact that MTA:SA is still hitting playerbase records as it is more than deserved considering all the work you guys are still putting up into it after 10 years. Keep it up and happy holidays fellas!

[KralBaris]

Her gün daha fazla oyuncu olmak arzusuyla, Welcome 2017, # 11 yıl

Mutlu Yıllar, 

http://trkralbaris.blogspot.com.tr/

# mtasa 
 

Edited December 24, 2016 by KralBaris

[terreus]

Nice Video GTX

[koragg]

Until the start of 2016 i didn't really notice how much work is being put into making and managing this game and community. Since i started to work seriously on my server months ago i saw that every little thing needs to be fixed and thought about if you wanna have an amazing experience. 

What you guys are doing is not only hard but time consuming as well. And considering that you do this in your free time I've nothing else to say except to thank all of you for your dedication to the players and the game even so many years after the official release of San Andreas. Happy holidays and good luck on work on the next version.

[Mann56]

MTA Team has been doing a wonderful work with the mod out there and yeah, MTA still has a big playerbase even after the big amount of games out there. It's a great achievement. Hats off to the MTA Team! 

[Rudransh]

Great work. Still there are thousands of players who don't know about MTA:SA. I was going through a  group on facebook and there was a post "What if GTA:SA is remastered and a Multiplayer comes" I mean 0.01% people know about MTA:SA. Mostly know about SAMP (5%). Other than that no one knows about a GTA:SA multiplayer. Well, yeah, i tried my best to tell those guys about MTA:SA. Hope it gets something good next year

Hats off guys

[zero]

Yehh, mta is best mod multiplayer, Congratulations team, nice videos.

[wesoly]

Just now we have been set up a new player record!  

Edited January 6, 2017 by wesoly

[Jusonex]

It was even slightly higher:

New record: 28476 players - 2017 Jan Fri 6th 17:30

[xeon17]

Congratulations, hopefully 2017 will be another good year for MTA

Do you have any plans for 2017? Will there be any cool updates?