Worth it?

[Artysh]

Hello everyone,

A quick intro - I've been around the community since 2009, playing and developing. Maybe some of you would know me as CLT or Cesar Lauren Tom...
I came around this open.mp project and was intrigued, I see there's some activity and 29k players daily, most of them are ofc playing on the russian servers. 

So my question is - is it worth starting a roleplay server nowdays? I've a gm lying on my GitHub for years and it's ready to run.

When talking about is it worth it or not, I don't mean money aspects. Just if there's a chance to still build a stable community that keeps enjoying the game. 

Looking forward to your answers...

BR,
Arty

[Shadeush]

It certainly is worth starting a roleplay server.  I started playing on SA:MP back in the summer of 2007 and that was quite a long time ago now.  I could type for pages here about my experiences and memories but there's not much activity here on this forum and not many people will read these posts, most people don't care really.  Message boards and forums are generally quieter now than back then so you might want to try out the Open.MP Discord server as there's plenty of discussion going on there.

Going back to your question, I will simplify my story but from 2007 to 2009 I played on a roleplay server and I eventually left with a few players to create our own server.  In the beginning I had no programming experience so I couldn't contribute any code but I did provide ideas, content and eventually I managed the server team.  Those were great days, we had a small community of 30 to 40 players but shared some fantastic memories, many hilarious nights, lots of fighting but we made plenty of friendships too - many are gone forever but even now some of us are still around but I think I'm probably the only one really still playing or coding for SA:MP and it's been a regular interest/hobby of mine for many years.

In 2009 I moved on from our team project for various reasons, though really I wanted to start my own server and I started with a free script from the SA:MP forums.  Back then it was Public Enemy Number One script (you might remember it was similar to the Godfather game modes).  At that time I thought it was a good script (and it was) but since then I've been developing and updating that old game mode and it's far more advanced now.  Over 85% of the script has changed and it has so many features and updated elements that I've worked hard to create.

Personally speaking, in my opinion it is worth starting a roleplay server for two reasons.  You may really enjoy the experience as I did in the past, those were the best gaming years of my life which I miss so I'm often nostalgic to repeat the past (which is unlikely) but I feel I would like to try.  And secondly because I've now got a great game mode which I want other players to experience and I would like to manage a successful, enjoyable and fun server again.  I've been wanting to do just that since I retired from the scene in 2011.  I finished on a high in 2011 though because the server was successful averaging 50 to 100 players which although not large in comparison to today, it was for myself and our server team back then.  Many of our regular players then quit or moved on to other servers that didn't last long and I realise now that we had something special.  Besides all that I've put hundreds of coding hours into my server and part of me thinks it deserves to live.

Something you need to consider before progamming/hosting again is this though. For many years now server owners have been unable to announce their server, what I mean is that when players load the SA:MP client application to view servers it was normal to see two tabs: one for the Internet and the other for Hosted - at some time in the past I believe Kye/Kalcor turned off the free Internet list and only accepted payment for servers to appear on the Hosted tab list.  A couple of years ago the cost was something in the region of €20 to €30 a month on top of hosting payments so for many people it was far more difficult to launch a server and gain any players as their server was literally invisible to the client application.

Now the recent news is that the SA:MP client will basically cease functioning, those lists of servers will be turned off so while the client software will work it won't load any servers.  There are fixes and ways around this to load an alternative list but you can find out about that on their Discord channels.  So in the past this is what has stopped me from (re)starting my server - primarily because of the ridiculous monthly cost.  Open.MP may soon be able to improve the situation if they release their client software.  Otherwise server owners can really only attract players by online advertising and by joining a list of servers (sam.markski.ar/web) so there is still potential for success.

Well these are my thoughts, I hope you get some more replies here on the forum.

[Artysh]

Hey, first of all thanks for your detailed answer, and for the time taken to write it down.
So basically you mostly confirmed what I thought and was hoping for.
It's great to see old school community members still sticking around, and of-course the development team of open.mp.
I see that the Discord is more active, but the forums still provide better perspective to understand what's going on I guess, at least for those who are used to them ;)
I was running a server with a gamemode me and a friend of mine, who is also a developer wrote back in the day, we maintained and updated it over the years alot.
I think of doing a quick re-write to maybe make it more compatible for Android devices and maybe less complicate as it was heavy roleplay intentioned.
I might start sniffing around to see if a community can be built slowly, and maybe run a beta server to see that players gather.
About the client - I was never counting on those listings, I was mostly bringing players in from a lot of advertising. It might be a little bit pricey but it's a rewarding outcome.
So anyways - I guess I'll see you around, and once again thanks for the answer.
Might be a good thing to see open.mp client coming out, I will look forward to it.