Author Topic: Game Review  (Read 28503 times)

Offline Arran

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Game Review
« on: 01 08, 2014, 10:25:31 pm »
I've been thinking about this a lot recently and I've realised that the bottleneck in development isn't me, but the suggestions. I look at IGF and can't see any topics that make me think "That's good, it's worth making and it'd definitely make the server more enjoyable" it's almost as if the community have lost the ability to come up with new ideas, we've had hundreds of updates in the last year but really, has the server changed at all in the last year? Well the player count hasn't, if anything it's worse, it seems that the only thing the community can suggest is little tweaks and utility additions and when crap like this gets the most votes you know something is seriously wrong.

So I was thinking, how about open the board to everyone? The suggestions wouldn't be any better though, there would be just more of them and more useless posts. So what are we going to do? I could just script what I want but that doesn't always work out well and as if having to make the stuff isn't hard enough I have to come up with all the ideas too? Then I thought, it'd be cool if someone actually reviewed the server as if it was a computer game or a movie.

A review would be much better than individual suggestions because individual suggestions never mention the root cause of the problem. For example there's a suggestion to allow you to cancel making drugs with a drug lab and the suggestion makes sense but what if all it does is cover over a bigger problem? What if what we really need is a whole new drug creation system? Why does nobody ever suggest that? Why does nobody ever suggest actual changes to the server? The suggestions are all dull and the server is getting stale, so we're going to try something new.

We're going to have a competition that anyone can participate in, especially those who don't have access to Ingame Features. You're going to be making a review. Not just any review though. You have to be analytical. You have to look at everything, not just one area. Rather than suggesting little tweaks to what's already there, you have to come up with new things. It doesn't even have to be about new features, you can say whatever you want if you think that's what would help the game improve. Your review doesn't even need to be written, a video works too. Just post it in this topic.

Depending on what's in the reviews, some of the ideas might get made but that's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for people who are willing to review the game on a regular basis, to be official critics. People who will come up with the right ideas to prevent the game from getting staler and staler. We need YOU, to use your imagination!

So there was some talking on IRC about this, 'Exit' linked to this video and although it's not exactly a review video, it's a really good video:

« Last Edit: 01 08, 2014, 11:09:26 pm by Arran »
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larrysick

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Re: Game Review
« Reply #1 on: 01 08, 2014, 11:31:58 pm »
Here is a suggestion: Make prison more tolerable, more fun. People are gonna go there no matter what. If there were fun things to do in jail like boxing or weight lifting, it make it more realistic. It wouldn't feel so dead and if it gets more people in jail, than fine, the cops and criminals win. 

Dave

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Re: Game Review
« Reply #2 on: 02 08, 2014, 02:31:45 pm »
The first thing that ever got me into playing a server like this one was one specific reason: The car system.

Simple features can actually get a lot of players to stay into the game. So I was thinking that something like this needs a huge revampment, it is something that always comes into my mind, even though I can't really get enough ideas to make it something that can actually change completely the way it is now, for good.

The other day, some people were talking on IRC about a driver's license idea. It wouldn't be that easy to obtain, and it would involve a lot of other things related to the server, as we would need more jobs that don't involve using cars at all to maintain ourselves during the time we try to obtain the license. Taxi drivers would actually become a bit more useful as for roleplay, as people would actually need to try them. Same with pilots

Apart from that, in real life we can't afford a car that easy. Obtaining a car here just seems way too easy, and I think that maybe a lot of people here just leave when they feel like everything is too easy to obtain, and something as important for a game like San Andreas as the vehicles should have a bit more value in a server like CIT.

This is just an idea that doesn't have to actually be the way I'm specifying, but it could be worked on

Offline Urban

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Re: Game Review
« Reply #3 on: 02 08, 2014, 04:16:11 pm »
Well i'd like to talk about civilian side, first of all civilian side is characterized with 3 jobs, 1st is farmer 2nd is iron miner/cave miner and 3rd is fisherman.

let's talk about iron miner/cave miner first, So most people who are doing this job are criminals as they need ammo for turfing/CnR/cop killing etc... and also because they spend more money than they gain as criminal and that's why they are iron miner and just don't buy ammo from F7 and at the moment CIT is too much focused on that craft system, i'm not against this as we need to work but for example, you need oil, iron and explosive to make combat shotgun, but why do we need oil? (let's say F7 doesn't exist) you need  first to spend like 1/2 hours as cave miner then you need to take oil turfs, and need to fight cracks groups who are using explosive and lagging as hell, imagine if you were a new player, how many hours you'll need yes other type of ammo doesn't need oil, so you can just easily work as cave miner, but you are L0 so you are not going to gain a lot of iron/explosive and you gain explosive randomly, so yeah this is hard just to make some ammo.

So what should change as iron miner/cave miner is that you gain more explosive and also a bit more of iron, and i'm more boring of working as cave miner than a iron miner because first, you can't use any vehicle and it's very tight mean that you can't use a vehicle in, even a sanchez or a kart and also because the mine is big, and you need to run for 2/3 minutes just to have iron and you are not even sure that you'll get some explosives.


About farmer: Well all of you how this job is, main reason of why people are farmer is that it's well pay, also you earn herbs/hemps (and you need this to make medkits) mean that's it's useful in /craft for criminals/cops and also because it's a simple job, you only need to do this: buy seeds, spawn a tractor, put your seeds, wait 4 minutes (yes you don't need to do anything for 4 minutes and that's one of the main reason of why farmer is an AFK job and why people go AFK as they don't need to do anything) after that you know what do the farmer. In real life, the farmer just doesn't only do that, there is a lot of another thing i'm not farmer but i'm sure we could add some new features for farmer on CIT, of course no need to do something 100% RP like the same as real life, but at least something fun to do, and something boring that will only lead you to a /afk.


About fisherman: Well you are just catching fish and stay AFK for 5 minutes then do a 180° with your reefer and stay AFK again 5 minutes this job is even worse than  as you stay more AFK and earn a lot of money (even more than farmer I think) plus, earn nitrous and this is needed for rustic rocket in /craft and also for people who are using nitrous for their car. So, we could make something like iron miner, while you are driving your reefer, every 10 seconds something with a "fish" will appear and you'll need to press on it and wait like 5 seconds to catch some fish or for example let's imagine there is a shark and you need to turn on left/right to dodge this shark as he is going to eat you.

I even have an idea about this job, like adding a new job like pilot or taxi/limo driver where you need to take X person to a Y position, of course you'll need to turn etc... and we can use the squalo for something like this.

Also about payments, I tested trucker, i'm L1 and i'm paid very well. But other jobs (not farmer/fisherman) aren't paid so well, it affect mainly new players, there is a ton of new players everyday on CIT, and they need to work hard to earn money, and being VIP while starting is good same with a pistol, that's good  but you are not going to kill 100 cops/criminal with that. So of course, this new player need to work but payments are so low that this new player need to work for hours and hours, when I begun on CIT, I had my infernus after 100 hours of playing, 100 hours of playing is more than one week, and I wasn't online 24 hours of course and imagine at the moment there is a crisis on CIT mean you can't buy any ammo. you may buy guns, yes but you need to work first before you buy one but you are L0 in every civilians job, mean you won't earn more than like 60K per hour even if you are farmer or fisherman and after you bought  your gun, you need to buy ammo, only way to have them are in F7 (depend which ammo it is but still if you want at least 1000 ammo it's not cheap.) or work as cave miner but you are L0, so you are going to work for like 5/6 hours to finally have like 5000 ammo for the only gun you have, and you don't even have one car, and you are not going to go from LS to SF everyday with a faggio just to change your job/meet your friends etc... and cheap car cost like 75K, and 75K isn't cheap for a new player.

That's why we should increase payments of some jobs (increasing it like 50%) not for all of them, as I tested every jobs and i'm L5+ with most of them. So, jobs who need an increasing of 50% for their payments are:

  • Taxi/limo driver (I'm L2 and after one day of work, I only earned 65-70K.)
  • Delivery man (payments are good when your vehicle is still at 100% but you won't stay at 100% for more than 5 minutes and this is even a bit annoying.)
  • Bus driver (I rarely have seen people doing this job, this job is interesting but no one use it because of his payment.)


maybe increasing their payments will brings people to work as taxi/limo driver or delivery man or Bus driver (like the same as trucker after that the payment was increased I saw more trucker than before.) Also mean less people boring of working only as fisherman/farmer and these jobs aren't "AFK job."



Last thing I wanted to state is that only 50% of LV is used, 50% of it is only sand and i'm sure we could add some jobs there, even also race (a race in sand is a good idea) and even one Criminal event? there is 2 in SF so I don't know why we shouldn't add one there.


To finish, maybe it wasn't a real "review" but i'm sure we will appreciate more CIT like this and we don't need 156110 things to have fun. Example: with one ball, you can do a lot of activities and sports.
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iAltair

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Re: Game Review
« Reply #4 on: 02 08, 2014, 05:10:51 pm »
I don't know if anyone is actually going to work on this but to reiterate how important I think this is, I will only do bug fixes until someone actually makes a proper review.
Dr.Chip and I are working on a review just wait.

Offline Arran

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Re: Game Review
« Reply #5 on: 02 08, 2014, 05:16:31 pm »
About fisherman: Well you are just catching fish and stay AFK for 5 minutes then do a 180° with your reefer and stay AFK again 5 minutes this job is even worse than  as you stay more AFK and earn a lot of money (even more than farmer I think) plus, earn nitrous and this is needed for rustic rocket in /craft and also for people who are using nitrous for their car. So, we could make something like iron miner, while you are driving your reefer, every 10 seconds something with a "fish" will appear and you'll need to press on it and wait like 5 seconds to catch some fish or for example let's imagine there is a shark and you need to turn on left/right to dodge this shark as he is going to eat you.

I really do need to improve fisherman lol. I remember when it got suggested and then I made it and someone was so disappointed that it was so crap LOL. It's funny cause it's true.
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Offline Lucky

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Re: Game Review
« Reply #6 on: 02 08, 2014, 06:23:28 pm »
Forget all these features, we have enough features already from jobs to events, all it takes is a script. If CIT was real, the world would be a better place.

What we really need is more people entering the server, as Arran stated player count has gone worse. I remember when the server touches 1000+ without a problem. We need some sort of genius marketing to promote CIT2. 

Let me tell you something but dont feel offended in any way. When I first heard of CIT2 or the fact that there was an online modded version of GTA SA was when I had nothing but an average to no good PC. If I had all these high end consoles or even a high end gaming PC I wouldn't even touch GTA SA let alone MTA because I would be so busy with playing BF3, COD, GTA V etc . So what my point is that the majority of CITizens who play CIT2 probably has a bad PC [a poll to prove it]. We need to attract the less fortunate.

Also I know this may sound absurd, but why don't you make the server less strict, which means less bans.

TheAmine

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Re: Game Review
« Reply #7 on: 02 08, 2014, 06:55:54 pm »
Also I know this may sound absurd, but why don't you make the server less strict, which means less bans.
CIT is not strict at all. Like every community in the world, CIT has rules, or what's called in real world "the law". Law was made to organize our lives, people who break it get punished, those who follow it live peacefully.

If CIT didn't have all those rules, we would live by the forest law. Meaning admins can abuse their powers whenever they want, players can flame however they want, be racist as much as they want. Do we really want that? I'd rather live in a community with rules that sets limits to my freedom, than live in a community full of disrespect and stupidity.

Offline ZtyX

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Re: Game Review
« Reply #8 on: 03 08, 2014, 06:26:58 am »


  And yeah, the job is pretty much crap. You just get in the boat, and drive around. Nothing which would make players enjoy what they are actually doing.


Why do you think the Fisherman and Farmer job is popular? .. Because you can relax and AFK. Did you stop and think about that before you got the awesome idea to start changing things? I bet there are a lot of people who would prefer simply doing nothing and earning money because they dislike civilian jobs and just need some money so they can keep turfing or whatever. People don't like to be forced to do stuff and now they're used to earning money relatively easy while being semi-afk, so Im sure a segment of the civilian workers would be annoyed by now having to work much more actively. This could easily lead to a decline in people doing that particular civilian job. ... So altogether I am not sure you need to invest more time into making something like that more micro-management intensive. It could have the opposite effect, while I am sure some hardcore civilians would enjoy it. But that's because they are different from criminals and turfers.

CIT is not strict at all. Like every community in the world, CIT has rules, or what's called in real world "the law". Law was made to organize our lives, people who break it get punished, those who follow it live peacefully.

If CIT didn't have all those rules, we would live by the forest law. Meaning admins can abuse their powers whenever they want, players can flame however they want, be racist as much as they want. Do we really want that? I'd rather live in a community with rules that sets limits to my freedom, than live in a community full of disrespect and stupidity.

I have to agree with the guy who said that and I really don't know why you would compare a game server with real life instead of other games. You're also taking it a bit far by saying the alternative is "forest law" when its possible to have order without such high degree of control and enforcing. I have played a lot of games over the years and this is the most strict game server I have ever been on. You really have to be careful with what you say or do and sometimes it borders on ridiculeous. But OK, I think it's this strict because there are a lot children playing this game and they can act pretty childish (as kids do). I would compare the degree of "strictness" with Runescape which was also full of kids playing it.

It's funny he should bring that up because I suggested some game features that would be outlets for some of all the built-up tension and stress from everything being so strict.

Oh, and finally.. Honestly, Im afraid of saying my opinion sometimes because you never know if that's too much criticism. Maybe the same goes for suggesting things. There are a lot of rules about what you can suggest and u cant. So maybe people just dont bother. I know I am pretty discouraged to post more ideas (even if they might be radical) when they get closed easily without being voted properly. The problem here is that for someone to be creative regularly and continuously, he actually needs something in return. Some kind of fun from suggesting stuff. Some people do it for farming posts, but I don't really care about that. I care about interaction with other players and to see if people like or dislike my suggestion. Well, I can't get that satisfaction if the topic is closed before it has run its life.

Forget all these features, we have enough features already from jobs to events, all it takes is a script. If CIT was real, the world would be a better place.

What we really need is more people entering the server, as Arran stated player count has gone worse. I remember when the server touches 1000+ without a problem. We need some sort of genius marketing to promote CIT2. 

Let me tell you something but dont feel offended in any way. When I first heard of CIT2 or the fact that there was an online modded version of GTA SA was when I had nothing but an average to no good PC. If I had all these high end consoles or even a high end gaming PC I wouldn't even touch GTA SA let alone MTA because I would be so busy with playing BF3, COD, GTA V etc . So what my point is that the majority of CITizens who play CIT2 probably has a bad PC [a poll to prove it]. We need to attract the less fortunate.

Also I know this may sound absurd, but why don't you make the server less strict, which means less bans.

I have those luxuries, but I don't even want to touch them because of how awesome CIT is due to it's freedom, features and just the gameplay and metagaming. Its an absolutely amazing game server. I actually prefer playing CIT than other games that cost many million dollars to make. .. I agree that marketing is useful and good, but you're going too far when saying that we don't need more features.


« Last Edit: 03 08, 2014, 06:55:42 am by ZtyX »

Offline Arran

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Re: Game Review
« Reply #9 on: 03 08, 2014, 11:28:15 am »
Forget all these features, we have enough features already from jobs to events, all it takes is a script. If CIT was real, the world would be a better place.

What we really need is more people entering the server, as Arran stated player count has gone worse. I remember when the server touches 1000+ without a problem. We need some sort of genius marketing to promote CIT2. 

Let me tell you something but dont feel offended in any way. When I first heard of CIT2 or the fact that there was an online modded version of GTA SA was when I had nothing but an average to no good PC. If I had all these high end consoles or even a high end gaming PC I wouldn't even touch GTA SA let alone MTA because I would be so busy with playing BF3, COD, GTA V etc . So what my point is that the majority of CITizens who play CIT2 probably has a bad PC [a poll to prove it]. We need to attract the less fortunate.

Also I know this may sound absurd, but why don't you make the server less strict, which means less bans.

Yes we do have enough features but the problem is some of these features are pathetic (like fisherman job) it would have actually been better to have less jobs but much more quality in each job.

People do enter the server, we've had at least 800,000 accounts registered since we started. People are trying the server out every day, but less than 1% of them decide to become regular visitors.

I refuse to believe that MTA is only played because people can't play 'better games' how are they better, because they have better graphics, so what? Better graphics doesn't make the game more fun, the game actually being fun, playing with friends and group / squad mates and all that stuff, makes it fun. If you play on highest settings with texture and water shaders and our weapon mods on and maybe some of the car mods you like the from '/carmods' the game is not that bad and plus we could quite easily do some work to make the game look even better but the problem is so many people still play in crap resolutions on lowest settings there's no point.

People are free to appeal their bans but virtually all of the bans that we issue have to be issued. We don't even have a deathmatching rule any more so you can't say it's strict.

Oh, and finally.. Honestly, Im afraid of saying my opinion sometimes because you never know if that's too much criticism. Maybe the same goes for suggesting things. There are a lot of rules about what you can suggest and u cant. So maybe people just dont bother. I know I am pretty discouraged to post more ideas (even if they might be radical) when they get closed easily without being voted properly. The problem here is that for someone to be creative regularly and continuously, he actually needs something in return. Some kind of fun from suggesting stuff. Some people do it for farming posts, but I don't really care about that. I care about interaction with other players and to see if people like or dislike my suggestion. Well, I can't get that satisfaction if the topic is closed before it has run its life.

This is exactly why I want people to make reviews.

Reviews can't get down voted.

Reviews can have as much criticism in them as they want, that is the whole idea of a review.

If someone makes a proper review that they clearly put a lot of time into, I might like it so much that they are one of the 'winners' of this 'competition' and I would give them official critic status where they will make regular reviews (plus some reward for their effort) and these reviews will contain a variety of suggestions all of which would stand a much better chance of getting completed because each suggestion in the review will have a lot of detail and reasoning as to why it'll benefit the game.
« Last Edit: 03 08, 2014, 11:38:58 am by Arran »
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Abdoice

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Re: Game Review
« Reply #10 on: 03 08, 2014, 05:16:37 pm »
I suggest something like a secret organization (other than groups and squads) that would have a certain goal. For example,  Secret organization X may be created, and the leader (a bot) would have to choose 100 random players to participate in it to help fulfill the ultimate goal (eg. spraying some locations with a spraycan, destroy certain buildings, make secret bases, etc...).
once the organizations completes it's goal(s), it would make a huge celebration, revealing itself to the public, and the goal they achieved. Then it'd be added to the history of succesful secret organizations, then another one with different goals would secretly be created, and so on. If the organization fails to complete it's goal within a time limit (say a week), information about it may leak, and the law force will exterminate it, as it sees that they are wrong, then it'd be added to the history of failed secret organizations.

This suggestion will change the daily routine of players, and I believe will help increase fun, and be more realistic.

MagicTampa

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Re: Game Review
« Reply #11 on: 03 08, 2014, 05:37:53 pm »
Just asking, I am thinking of making a a video review but should I like make a review of the cit2.net or the actual server. Because my shitty computer cant handle MTA and Fraps and the same time. So can I like make a review of this website? If yes, then like I am thinking of talking about things that you should add to this and some un-needed features. Like its just a thought but let me know about it. And Arran, I am not interested if you give me a 'critic' title or not like you said above, I am doing this because I wanna voice my thoughts about the server and some of them cant be talked about in any board. Anyways, if you want I will try my best to make it but I will obviously need a few days. A week should be enough actually.
« Last Edit: 03 08, 2014, 05:45:17 pm by MagicTampa »

BigSmoke420

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Re: Game Review
« Reply #12 on: 03 08, 2014, 08:35:08 pm »
One thing I will say, Arran from running this...

https://www.youtube.com/user/lilplayboy98

That the more option you give people the more ideas and possible bug/scripts you will then be responsible for.

In my channel I have to edit/record/create/mod/research all the characters I use in my videos that are not found in the game. Then I let people suggest what they want to see and when I make those battles they get way less views than the ones I actually come up with.

In other words you have that right, just make the updates you want and you will see less people will complain. It's called experience...

from example, you know your own server, you know what people want and like so when you place something on it people like it too.

If you give voice to more people (especially new people) it will create way more work for you  and in the end it's not cost effective.

I took 3 months off my youtube channel when I came back to CIT (pending ban appeal for this) and I sat back and enjoyed profit.

You're already getting a ton of people to donate and it's not because of what they don't have, it's because of what's already applied to in the game... meaning...

People don't hate what they don't know. You can update the server once every 2 weeks and people will still continue to visit it.

I never lost subscribers when I was gone from my YouTube channel, I actually gained more.

The server is developed and you run a monopoly, you are the only server on MTA that is worth visiting.


Assassin15

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Re: Game Review
« Reply #13 on: 03 08, 2014, 09:44:43 pm »
the problem with the visitors is that most of them finds the server complicated, first time I joined I found it so hard to play but I made it through cause I have some friends who helped me, if you want visitors to stay you should make it less complicated, im not sure if there is a way to do it but I had that in my mind and wanted to say it.

^^"

Offline Arran

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Re: Game Review
« Reply #14 on: 03 08, 2014, 11:26:48 pm »
the problem with the visitors is that most of them finds the server complicated, first time I joined I found it so hard to play but I made it through cause I have some friends who helped me, if you want visitors to stay you should make it less complicated, im not sure if there is a way to do it but I had that in my mind and wanted to say it.

^^"

Well, if anyone is making a serious review they will definitely review how it is to be a new player. It'd be hard for a regular to pretend they don't know anything about the server though.
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