Stopping activities factored to server inactivity

[bazuka36]

As the title says, I am a firm believer that the strive to stop criminal activities factored into stopping the server's activity as a whole.

It was a dilemma if I would type this or not, but as I am taking a shit now with my phone in my hands, my brain says: "fuck it let's go."

I will start this topic with a personal anecdote and argumentation for those thoughts.

If you want to skip the yappachino and go for the suggestions, scroll down or use ctrl + f to search "My suggestions". If you're on mobile, use the search function for the same word on Chrome or whatever goofy browser you're using.

I am writing this topic with the experience of a former HQ and leader in multiple gangs (back when the server was active). In between that period, I had also given a shot at copside in 2019 by joining STF.

Back then, JBs were incredible when I played as a cop, even when the jail was "unbalanced." When a JB was active, I would hop in and could easily make around 1 mil in about an hour while also having fun.

The turnside was what I saw in teamchat or radio when a JB was active. The majority of the cops wanted to stop the jailbreak. Sure, you want to have a goal, I get it. It wasn't a bad goal back then because it was quite a challenge.

However, the reality hits after the jailbreak, because once you had stopped it there wasn't much to do other than AFKing in base. Criminals logged off and so did cops too. Stopping that jailbreak resulted in a temporary activity drop.

Now, this isn't a bad thing; it was a part of the game. However, the thought was bad. I recently returned to the game after a spree of bans. The first thing I noticed is that almost every update for copside was made to make stopping criminal activities easier: slow doors in bank robberies, a jail which makes stopping the jailbreak easier, HLS participation in city banks and jailbreaks.

It looks like all the updates were made to give cops a "winning moment." However, I believe those moments came at the cost of activities.

Instead, what I wanted back when I was in STF was for cops to start activities without the dependance on criminals. I still believe that is something to strive for now that 7 years have passed since.

Cops are still too dependant on criminal activity to do something. However, I won't deny the work put in, because it is better than when I was a squad member. I will present 2 lists comparing the two sides of 2019 & 2026 to show the work that has been put in, while simultaneously pointing out the dependance in 2026. (My list might be flawed, because I couldn't decide if, for example, something like patrolling is an activity to put in the list. It is started by cops, but also stops criminal activity by removing them from the map.)

2019:

Activities that criminals can start:

· Bankrob

· Jailbreak

· Storerob

· Gang robbery (probably my favorite back then, but it was GANG vs GANG)

· Turf

· Raceflag

 

Activities that cops start:

· None

 

2026:

Activities that criminals can start:

· Bankrob

· Jailbreak

· Casino robbery

· Organisation robbery

· Turf

· Raceflag

 

Activities that cops can start:

· Organisation robbery

· Turf

· Money transport

 

Neutral activities (started by the server):

· Storerob

· VIP

As you can see from the comparison, there have been changes. However, even though cops have more things to do without dependance, they are still too dependant.

One last thing I would like to point out is the cracking minigame. It is one of the cores of criminal activities. I myself was forced to learn cracking in 2016 to revive bank robberies in MMC, but not everyone is 13 years old and autistic enough to spend time on that. Especially if you are a squad member, who doesn't require any activity to start with cracking except organisation robberies.

This results in the fact that most cracked GR safes by squad members are done by ex-gang members, for example Lincoln, who is leading that statistic for cops. Adding activities for cops to be more engaged with this minigame seems like a fix, or getting rid of it altogether.

That leads me to another thing. I believe there is a conflict between the implementation of the minigame and additions like "slow doors," because in a way the speed in which you open the door has no value and the success solely relies on defence. Why not just get rid of cracking as a whole and just put doors that open in 25 seconds while you wait in a marker (the speed of an average cracker)? Doing this for GRs, BRs, etc. can increase the quantity of the activities as there is no dependance on a niche amount of players with this skill.

 

My suggestions:

Activities:

Add more activities for cops to start without depending on criminals.

Example: bunker raid. Cops crack doors like a bank. Instead of safes, there are rooms that you crack in which reside high-profile criminal NPCs or terrorists. They have like 10 HP because opening doors and rooms take the most effort. Killing them gives money like a bankrob for all cops in a certain area. So you can like 8/8 terrorists killed or some shit. The raid should reset in like 5 mins like a BR. Crims should be rewarded for stopping a raid by getting money for the amount of criminal/terrorist NPCs that are alive after the reset.

 

More activities like this can be done, but I really like the bankrob mirroring concept. Feel free to write what you have in mind.

 

Balance:

· Get rid of slow doors.

· HLS armor should be reduced to only 10%. I don't know if STIM is a thing, but get rid of that too. (A lot of cops put effort into getting in, so getting rid of it seems illogical. We resort to nerfing it.)

· Remove the vent in jail as it leads to stopping the activity. It is placed infront of key areas to keep the activity running.

 

Cracking:

Controversial, but get rid of cracking like we got rid of pressing space to evade tasers. Open doors in 25 seconds and casino in 35, as that is the average speed of crackers nowadays. Doing that might make squads engage in GRs more as well.

 

Alright let me yap one more time:

Balancing an activity-based server is not about making one side win over the other. It's about giving both sides the same opportunities to start an activity.

 

[bazuka36]

@Crank ( how to quote on new forums? )

In that sense, I am not able to comment on the balance. Though, my thought process was not directed towards nerfing a side. It was made to revert changes that prevented activities from happening, in order to create a new equation. I will mention this equation later in this yap of 4.4k words.

Your argument on slow doors or jail is kind of a summary of the mindset that annoyed me, while I myself was playing as a cop.

Your objective as a cop shouldn't be stopping the jailbreak, but arresting as many criminals as you can while it is active, because that's when you have something to do, mainly due to the dependance.

In a sense, a criminal activity done in the middle of the night is still an activity at that certain moment on the server, rather than none at all. Though, this is where your view and my view come into combat.

· Your view: I'd rather stop 1 bankrob a week.

· My view: I'd rather attend 9 bank robberies a day.

And yes, that's not an exaggeration. Before all those changes were made to make stopping bank robberies easier or to "give a chance," there were more bank robberies done with only 3 banks than there are now with a bank on every corner of San Andreas.

You mentioned that the side you play influences your perspective, so let me put it in this way too. Let's say the bunker-raid-like concept was realized. You wouldn't organize this activity if you knew that it would be very easy for criminals to stop it and have the advantage. It is very illogical to start an activity designed to make you lose. This is the very definition of "balancing an activity-based server is not about making one side win over the other," because the point of the activity is to do the raid successfully and not to force a win for criminals.

That is the problem with the way cops are implemented in criminal activities over the last years. Instead of getting their own activities (the suggestion we have common ground on), the fun on the copside is designed around stopping criminal activities. That creates a conflict, because a bank robbery essentially becomes designed to be an activity to stop rather than to perform, in which case there is no reason to start it at all. Just like our hypothetical bunker raid that would be designed for criminals to win while the cops are the ones required to start it.

However, one part I agree on is that the changes I mention go in conflict with my thought process of "balancing an activity-based server is not about making one side win over the other. It's about giving both sides the same opportunities to start an activity."

Though, this is only the case if you take out the part of me wanting to create more activities for both sides.

Let me make it less abstract.

Crims: have a funny BR activity.

· Too easy: bankrobs happen more, cops are frustrated because of respawnmaxxing. (However, I don't think this is necessarily bad, because at least you attend a bankrob. You can arrest while the bank resets and more criminals are wanted for you to arrest after BR. But that's not the point.)

· Too hard: bankrob doesn't happen, cops are happy when they stop a bankrob but are bored in general.

· Balanced: bankrob happens at times that are inconvenient for cops, cops are annoyed due to this but sometimes feel the reward of winning.

All 3 scenarios are bad; however, only 1 is the most realistic for activity, and that's the easy one.

That doesn't mean that I am a fan of it, because this entire equation is the mistake this community made over the last decade. It is too tunnel-visioned. Here is how the equation should be:

· Crims: have an activity that they start. It's easy/balanced to finish.

· Cops: have an equal activity that they start. It's easy/balanced to finish.

This new equation keeps activities alive and doesn't necessarily give the objective to make one's own side win over the other, like you mentioned in your JB section, because every side wins in their own way and is good at their own activities.

I agreed with your HLS opinion in my original post. HLS was led by Vektor for a long time and was designed to be a roleplay-based group. The shift to add HLS to engage more with gameplay was mentioned by @Kain to be "temporary." However, this wasn't reality, and it ended up with countless people trying their best to be a part of HLS.

That's why HLS is the only thing that I want to nerf, instead of reverting. I agree with you that we can see which perks are necessary, but yeah. It would also be cool to give HLS activities they can start themselves so there are reasons to join or make the grind worth it.

One last thing, which I might get comments for like "he is mad because he didn't join" or whatever crap. I do not think that HLS would've been a problem if CLO was properly organized. Sure, HLS might involve some friendship politics, but its main purpose was to invite the most effective cops. I believe they did decently at that. Meanwhile, CLO was purely ran on friendship politics (this was told to me by a CLO member in 2016, with extensive details and examples). It resulted in it being a disadvantage to have CLO members that have armor and maybe duals to defend in your bankrob, because as some of them admit of themselves, "they can't aim." They shot themselves in their own foot due to this.

But in a way, the entire CLO thing only matters if we look at the tunnel-visioned equation I mentioned, and it shouldn't matter if both sides have an equal amount of activities.

 

[Crank]

Your suggestions are mostly beneficial to criminals. You said it yourself: balancing an activity-based server is not about making one side win over the other.

But a lot of your suggestions do exactly that. What you describe as "balance" mostly consists of nerfing cops:

- Slow doors: Slow doors are present when cop activity is low. Removing them would make criminals even more inclined to do BRs during the night or whenever fewer cops are online. It might slightly increase criminal activity during those hours, but that activity would take place precisely when fewer players are around to participate in and benefit from it. You would essentially incentivize criminals to time BRs around low cop counts instead of creating interactions between both sides.

- HLS: Getting rid of virtually all HLS perks would remove much of the purpose of HLS in the first place. People put effort into getting into HLS because it gives them an advantage in situations where they are heavily outnumbered. City banks can already turn into a slaughterhouse for cops, particularly when a large number of criminals are participating. HLS is one of the few mechanics that gives cops something capable of counteracting that numerical advantage. Whether its current perks need adjustment is debatable, but reducing HLS to the point where its advantages barely matter isn't much of a solution.

- Jail vent: The same principle applies here. If the argument is that stopping criminal activities kills activity, then almost any mechanic that helps cops win could be described as harmful to activity. At that point, however, you are no longer balancing the activity. You are making it deliberately harder for one side to achieve its objective so that the other side can keep the activity running for longer.

Giving cops more activities of their own, though, is something I absolutely agree with. Your bunker raid idea sounds interesting, although I am not sure how feasible NPC-based activities are on SAES. The underlying concept is good: give squads activities they can initiate themselves instead of requiring criminals to provide their gameplay for them.

I think that is actually the strongest part of your argument. Cops being dependent on criminals for activity is a legitimate problem. But solving that problem and nerfing cops in existing criminal activities are two separate issues. Giving cops more things to initiate addresses the dependency directly. Making cops weaker in BRs or JBs does not.

Overall, your balance suggestions seem to heavily favor criminals, and that brings us back to the same debate SAES has had for over a decade: one side is supposedly too strong and the other too weak.

If you significantly nerf cops, playing as a cop eventually stops being enjoyable. Fewer people then play cop, which in turn makes criminal activities less enjoyable because there is nobody meaningful to fight against. Sure, criminals could spam BRs with barely any resistance, but I don't see the appeal of that either. The opposition is part of what makes those activities fun.

There will always be people claiming that "cops are OP" and others claiming that "criminals are OP." You may genuinely believe the former; I may genuinely believe the latter. Both of us are inevitably influenced by the side we play and the experiences we have had. People naturally tend to support changes that benefit their own gameplay, but that doesn't necessarily mean those changes will improve server activity or make the game more enjoyable overall.

We may have a different opinion on the balancing aspect, but I think there is common ground in creating more activities rather than simply shifting power between the two sides. Give cops more activities they can initiate themselves, and look at existing activities that are genuinely struggling or outdated.

GRs are probably the best example. They could use substantial changes, and improving activities like GRs would contribute much more to server activity than another round of "nerf cops" versus "nerf criminals."

[Dinaz]

@bazuka36 didn't read everything but I must agree, cops nowadays would wish to stop every single BR there is and would be frustrated if it doesn't go their way, this shouldn't be the case. I would rather have 10 BRs a day and actively participate on trying to stop them, even if we fail stopping all 10, rather than having 1 BR a day that we can stop and that's it. 

HLS at LV/SF banks is still not much of a disadvantage and believe me when I say that, people have developed advanced methods of defending rather than the blind defending that you used to see(which made stopping it possible back in the day even without HLS). Only nerf that could be applied should be the stim, make it drug-speed-level or vending-speed-level but the perk remains the same, can be activated using the cmd(makes HLS worth the hassle atleast)

[bazuka36]

@Dinazyour response is unfortunately too one-dimensional and focusses on the symptoms more, while I adress the cause in my response to Crank. However I agree that I took too long to get there.

I like the mindset tough.

[Dinaz]

@bazuka36 if you were to nerf a group, a major nerf would just kill the whole side. Buffs and nerfs throughout the time were sequential, and even when they were minor, they drastically affected a whole side, either by morale or by gameplay disadvantages. So while I do understand your cause to the nerf, it still wouldn't make sense to take away the whole perk, but that's just my opinion

[bazuka36]

4 minutes ago, Dinaz said:

@bazuka36 if you were to nerf a group, a major nerf would just kill the whole side. Buffs and nerfs throughout the time were sequential, and even when they were minor, they drastically affected a whole side, either by morale or by gameplay disadvantages. So while I do understand your cause to the nerf, it still wouldn't make sense to take away the whole perk, but that's just my opinion

Over the last decade we have been focussing on buffing and nerfing that is just trying to fix the symptoms. 

The core problem that I adress is that cop side is dependant on criminal activity. Which makes it that perks are designed to stop a criminal activity. That's where the excitement is.

But this is very illogical as I mentioned. A criminal won't start an activity that he believes is designed for him to fail.

Instead of revolving cops succes around being able to win against criminals and stopping their activities. We should've focussed on giving cops activities they can do themselves and are good in themselves. Like the bunker-raid example.

What I wrote is just a version of what I wrote to Crank but in a bit more summarized way.

 

(Yes I finally learned how to quote)

12 hours ago, bazuka36 said:

However, one part I agree on is that the changes I mention go in conflict with my thought process of "balancing an activity-based server is not about making one side win over the other. It's about giving both sides the same opportunities to start an activity."

Though, this is only the case if you take out the part of me wanting to create more activities for both sides.

Let me make it less abstract.

Crims: have a funny BR activity.

· Too easy: bankrobs happen more, cops are frustrated because of respawnmaxxing. (However, I don't think this is necessarily bad, because at least you attend a bankrob. You can arrest while the bank resets and more criminals are wanted for you to arrest after BR. But that's not the point.)

· Too hard: bankrob doesn't happen, cops are happy when they stop a bankrob but are bored in general.

· Balanced: bankrob happens at times that are inconvenient for cops, cops are annoyed due to this but sometimes feel the reward of winning.

All 3 scenarios are bad; however, only 1 is the most realistic for activity, and that's the easy one.

That doesn't mean that I am a fan of it, because this entire equation is the mistake this community made over the last decade. It is too tunnel-visioned. Here is how the equation should be:

· Crims: have an activity that they start. It's easy/balanced to finish.

· Cops: have an equal activity that they start. It's easy/balanced to finish.

This new equation keeps activities alive and doesn't necessarily give the objective to make one's own side win over the other, like you mentioned in your JB section, because every side wins in their own way and is good at their own activities.

 

 

 

 

[Dinaz]

No no, I myself was never against ideas for cops to have their own fair share to start their own activities that they would be able to start and even allow crims to parttake in, that’s absolutely a great idea, but I simply mentioned the part where I disagreed with. Allowing both sides to have different activties to initiate would tremendously help both sides find their own interests rather than one side solely relying on the other side to start particular activities. We’ve seen how it affected turfs, crims would unite together to defeat police raids, kinda needs more policing rules wise but still, a good improvement whatsoever. So yes, with that, I completely agree with you.

[bazuka36]

28 minutes ago, Dinaz said:

No no, I myself was never against ideas for cops to have their own fair share to start their own activities that they would be able to start and even allow crims to parttake in, that’s absolutely a great idea, but I simply mentioned the part where I disagreed with. Allowing both sides to have different activties to initiate would tremendously help both sides find their own interests rather than one side solely relying on the other side to start particular activities. We’ve seen how it affected turfs, crims would unite together to defeat police raids, kinda needs more policing rules wise but still, a good improvement whatsoever. So yes, with that, I completely agree with you.

I like this nuance to your initial post.

My suggestions regarding the balance were written with the intention of reverting changes that made criminals stop doing bank robberies. The thing is, HLS has been realized; it's a reality, as I mentioned, and we should look at which perks prevent criminal activity. I agree that these suggestions can be flawed, even if there were more activities before they were implemented. It's very hard to take away an entire perk after it has already been implemented.

But yeah, we both agree that this isn't the core issue. I believe the priority of my suggestion should be giving cops activities they can perform, and then figuring out how we can revert changes to make criminal activities more common as well. Maybe if cops have a certain level of enjoyment in their activity, HLS maybe won't even need its perks to enjoy the game. As stopping a bankrobbery won't be the core way to enjoy this server.

I want both sides to have enough enjoyable gameplay that neither side's enjoyment depends on the other side losing.

[mellow]

Imma keep it simple I like the idea of having more activities

In Addition:

Would love to also see more Bankrobs but unfortunatly most gangs on the server are too pussy to even try a BR when they think it's not a 8/8 sadly, I have seen this issue in several gangs and we rlly should stop this mentallity in my opinion but it is what is.

Making the Casino Rob have less requirements would also be good rn as I haven't seen one of those in a while but recently just cameback and maybe Im missing them if they are being done idk

[Zarc]

In my opinion the real thing that players stop wanting to have an actual reward like being part of special groups unfortunately I know it's not easy and we can't all be part of it it would be an imbalance but maybe try to involve the server

[Zarc]

I'm not saying anything, I know I'm not part of any special group but in my opinion it's better to see the old style server as only the special teams and the official gangs as real opponents instead of seeing only De vs Clo

[bazuka36]

8 hours ago, mellow said:

Imma keep it simple I like the idea of having more activities

In Addition:

Would love to also see more Bankrobs but unfortunatly most gangs on the server are too pussy to even try a BR when they think it's not a 8/8 sadly, I have seen this issue in several gangs and we rlly should stop this mentallity in my opinion but it is what is.

Making the Casino Rob have less requirements would also be good rn as I haven't seen one of those in a while but recently just cameback and maybe Im missing them if they are being done idk

It's not a mindset issue when those criminals are simply applying basic logic that aligns with real life.

In the good old Wild West era, bank robberies were more common. Nowadays, the level of security has increased so much that if a bank robbery happens, it becomes world news.

That's exactly what happened in-game. The thought process was that if carrying out a bank robbery becomes harder, the number of failed bank robberies will increase.

However, just as you don't see a dozen failed bank robberies in real life, the same applies in-game. A criminal would only rob a bank under perfect circumstances because they need to succeed. This leads to the frequency of robberies dropping significantly. In-game, it's the same—the success rate doesn't really drop, but the frequency of activity does.

As I mentioned, it's highly illogical to start an activity you know will end in failure.

That's why we should avoid this endless cycle. Don't make police success dependent on criminal activities and failures; instead, give them their own activities, so criminals can focus on theirs as well.

We should stop blaming either side and look how we can give both sides the same oppurtunities to preform activities.

 

[Kain]

There's many different topics in this thread so I'll try and break down my points/opinions as much as I can.

This is purely based on my opinions and not the opinion of HQ as a whole.

Cop Activities

This is has been an ongoing issue for the last few years which we've tried to acknowledge, as evidenced by your comparison list of what activities cops can start. Changes such as money transport and the addition of squads in turfs were steps that were taken to try and give cops more autonomy in starting their own activities.

Money transport probably being the bigger success here, despite the controversy with rules to begin with. Groups like BRINKS continue to be one of the most active groups on the server.

Turfs had a mixed response (Similar to Org Robberies) in that it was a decent add but a straight up TDM between cops vs crims just becomes a war of attrition and autism. The numbers on the crim side (atleast pre-player count droop) pretty much guaranteed the eventual winner. The try-hard era that SAES has become also dissuades cops from even initiating these fights. (More on that later).

We're open to more ideas on activities for both teams but my personal opinion, atleast for the crim side, just try and make them different to the bank rob system. Most suggestions I see are just some bastardised versions of BRs which we really don't need since adding CRs and 3x more banks.

Special Groups

Groups are a difficult one which we've tried to give the Group Management control over as much as possible, while significant changes still generally require sign off from HQ.

HLS was admittedly my pet project a few years ago when I was more active ingame; a tool which I tried to use to balance the player count disparity between cops and crims at a time when there wasn't any cop triggered activities. The only real difference at the time being armour. This definitely had its pros and its cons. Pros being that it had its intended effects of reviving what was essentially a dead group and lowering the success rates of BRs. Granted a massive con of this which was unanticipated at the time was the 'coward mentality' which has been mentioned already in this thread. Some organisations just weren't even willing to try with the risk of failure despite there being no repercussions for fails. 

Eventually I did hand this off to Steven with the only strict requirement being that the member count must be kept low. This did grow legs over the years with the additions of stim etc. (Not something I personally would've agreed with from a game design pov but as Bazuka has said, it's more difficult to take something away once its already been added).

HLS is probably the catalyst that evolved OB into what is today with the tit for tat, they have this so we want that. Again, not something I fundamentally agree with but here we are. The end result here being that JBs are a bit of a mess.

Jailbreaks & BRs

JBs are awkward for balance because as mentioned, yes they're a good activity to have but from a game design pov, it's not practical to have perpetual event generating money like that. There is definitely a negative correlation on the cops side between duration and enjoyment. It gets to a point where infinitely respawning to die just gets tedious. Not to mention when someone takes it too far and just sits on the wall throwing nades down at the spawn.

This cycle got even worse with the addition of armour regenerating on arrest.

This is where DE was supposed to step in (who are excluded from kill arrest) and are meant to kill criminals out to break the loop. 

The way things are currently, I certainly don't see a reason to make any pro criminal changes around jail as the likes of HLS / DE are the only possibility of JBs ending these days.

For BRs, I don't have much to add as we've tinkered with them a lot over the years. All I would say is the length of the activity needs to be maintained (hence the slow doors). I wouldn't be against making cracking less trivial but no one is going to get any enjoyment out of a 5 minute activity that is over before cops can even respond. These have to be kept somewhat reachable for those that don't have houses in the area.

Laggers, Cheats, Instability and the Try-Hard Mentality

This is where the issue lies in my opinion. MTA has become riddled with cheats and aimbots all buried amongst MTAs unstable, untested releases to try and combat the former.

For example, opening the client now takes 5 mins for my top-end PC. My ADHD brain has forgotten I even opened MTA by the time the popup appears.

Lag abuse and cheats, currently we only ban those where we pretty much have hard evidence. (Sorry Bazuka, I know that hurts you.) but we still regularly get the odd ticket about someone 'lag abusing' and wiping out a BR. Is that one of the main contributors dissuading people from BRing? Probably.

The bigger one for me is the try hard mentality. My hypothesis being that the main reason people have stopped participating in more pvp focused activities (which a lot of the server is now) is due to the standard some gangs/individuals have set on the server. The use of tiny skins or potential aimbots just make the game not fun for anyone, especially in gang v gang turfs.

If it were solely up to me, I'd look at removing tiny skins from all Gang/Squad spawns and enforcing a stricter ban policy on suspected cheaters but this again goes back to the much harder to take away what's there already point.

 

 

[bazuka36]

@Kain

 

I liked your response. I will reply in a bit of a reverse way by going over the cheat/tryhard case first.

I agree that the increasing use of software to gain an advantage has greatly affected MTA as a whole. As you mentioned, MTA is now pretty unstable; however, we can focus on other factors instead of ones we don't have influence over.

True, there were always cheats in MTA, but it was very niche. 2022 was the year that MTA became flooded by public releases on VK or Discord.

This led major communities and money-based PvP leagues to move on from MTA. MTA-PUBG is a prime example.

This leads me to your suspected vs. hard evidence ban dilemma.

Because servers like MTA-PUBG moved on doesn't mean that communities regarding PvP have died. It's just that commercial ones were forced to move.

However, if we look at SAMP, where cheats have been a thing since the dawn of its existence, it still has PvP servers running with 50+ or 100+ players. Pure DM, non-stop. When I played there, I noticed that cheats tried to kill it, but the community kept it alive.

This brings me to the suspected vs. hard evidence debate. One thing those admins in SAMP do, next to cheat detection, is behaviour detection. All bullet hits on a skin are registered. Is your accuracy over 40%? You get 5 minutes to record your gameplay, get banned afterwards, and can't get unbanned until admins analyze your gameplay. Is your accuracy over 80% on certain bone points like chest or head? Too inhuman—get banned, son.

SAMP kept their community alive not by solely relying on anti-cheat, but by verifying suspicion with scripts that enable manually verifying human behaviour and forcing players to prove their innocence. That's why it stays alive, while MTA was greatly affected by the flood of cheats.

(By applying this scenario from a rational perspective, I agree that my ban from 2 years ago was the right set of actions. As I didn't have recorded in-game evidence to verify suspicious activity, a better set of actions—if we take SAMP as an example—would have been to force me to record a bank robbery and compare my behaviour to its unrecorded behaviour, or verify if the recording is humanly possible.)

For MTA, some of those manual detectors already exist. For example, a "bind detector" that blocks the usage of binding certain keys to get a more bugged animation in combat, like binding enter, jump, and aiming on the same key. It would be a realistic move to implement what we have and develop what we need to emphasize fair play more.

---

The "tryhard" case:

I believe it is a natural process in a game that, as time passes, more people try things out and the meta shifts with those discoveries. Certain mechanics that were overlooked become meta when proven useful.

· Shamals were always there; using them to spam kamikazes is a recent discovery.

· Bikes were always there (though donator-only at first); spamming them to annoy cops is a recent discovery.

· Even drugs were always there. The mechanic turned from something you rarely buy to something criminals will spam you for, if they don't have it for a nanosecond.

It's the same case for small skins. They always existed, but one gang decides that it would be good to abuse it (I wonder who to blame for this :p) and the rest of the gangs and squads follow.

Are they the core problem? I don't think so. However, I do agree that patching discovered mechanics once they become too game-defining can be a thing. Think about switching weapons after shooting or other mechanics that leave you with bugged animations. However, whether those are the cause, or if it's the same case for skins, is a debate up to the community and admins who, in the end, decide how they want their server to be shaped.

---

Cop activities:

Now that I've covered your final sub-topic, I will move to the crims vs. cops one, as it is the factor to activity I wanted to highlight with this topic.

I now have multiple common grounds on implementing more cop activities. Out of all my suggestions, this is the one I am the biggest ambassador of. However, one thing I saw you mention was your opinion against another BR/CR concept for criminals. I agree, and I want to add that criminals shouldn't be a priority for receiving another activity.

However, I do think copside deserves a concept that mirrors BR/CR mechanics. Cops won't rely on criminals to start BRs if they want to enjoy that concept in that scenario. Next to that I also think small PvE activities for copside give those who do not want to engage in PvP some fun.

Other than that, I do think the activity thing is sealed and we can move on to brainstorm implementations.

---

Turf/GR:

I myself haven't seen the first phases of turf/GR for cops. However, it comes to me with no surprise that cops wouldn't have the upper hand in these activities as a start. Criminals are used to the mechanics/tactics/locations of turf for a way longer time than cops, who were newly added. The same goes for GRs that rely on the cracking mechanic, which is a new concept for someone in copside but a daily minigame for a seasoned criminal.

Those activities require adaption, and though it can be numbers, I do see that cops are getting more of a hand in that activity.

A possible dispute to this can be the map in F11. The thing is, criminals themselves struggle with turf as an activity. The same goes for GR; SWAT/SM/UE are the only organisations with a safe. So it's a bit of a no-brainer that cops, who were newly introduced to these mechanics, have an even harder time.

---

Neutral activities:

One thing I want to add, which I didn't initially, is additions of neutral activities. A PBR or an activity of another concept every 2 hours can be a great implementation if it's started by the server. We won't depend on either side starting it, and both sides have enough time to prepare for the activity. Cops can now enjoy SR/other variants without relying on criminals to start it. Compared to side-dependent activities, I do think neutral activities need more of a balance.

---

Special groups and JBs:

I liked your anecdote to HLS. However, I do not think balancing special groups and JBs should be a priority, even if it seems like that from my initial suggestion.

I will compare our thoughts on JB, though. I myself agree that the current changes to the JB shouldn't be reverted except for one mechanic: the vent. As I do believe it contributes a lot to stopping the activity. The scenario in my head with this concept is that cops prevent criminals from leaving jail with their newly added corners and positions that prevent just dying over and over, and criminals prevent cops from stopping the activity through their dominant position.

However, this concept isn't a priority and can be looked at later.

The same goes for bank robs. Once cops do not depend on criminals to perform activities, we can adjust their activities in a way that they start them. But this is even lower priority than JBs, in my opinion, though it seems like a possible necessity.

---

Possible actions to take:

· Researching ways to manually catch suspected cheaters and verify their legitimacy through recorded gameplay or other methods.

· Analyzing which discoveries to existing mechanics disrupt gameplay (skins/buggy fighting animations/etc.).

· Brainstorming and adding more activities to copside.

- Brainstorm PvE activities for copside.

· Brainstorming and adding neutral activities.

· And if those are realized: look into tinkering criminal activities (BR/JB) a final time to make them more common.

Edited yesterday at 16:20 by bazuka36

[reket]

On 10/08/2026 at 01:38, Zarc said:

In my opinion the real thing that players stop wanting to have an actual reward like being part of special groups unfortunately I know it's not easy and we can't all be part of it it would be an imbalance but maybe try to involve the server

While the rest of the arguments in this topic are debatable between being too reasonable for criminals and too unfair for cops, I would like to add to this aspect. I agree that many players want to be a part of special groups but often have no way of showing their interest for it, thus reducing server activity.

DE and CLO currently have a shared activity called Warfare, which is similar to turfing. This rarely gets used though, usually one side AFK turfs the other, because the attacking side often attacks with big numbers, leaving the defenders outnumbered, due to anyone being able to attack at any point in time.

Instead of the current system, I'm proposing a time-based change:

* Warfare happens in a secondary dimension. There's a Top 10 Killers panel, and at the end of the war, players will be rewarded in cash by how many kills they had + how long they attended for. This could also allow players to host mini-events during the war, f.e. "top cop killer gets 10 million"

* Warfare starts every 24 hours, at peak hours, f.e. 19:00 in-game time. This ensures players have enough time to decide whether they can attend or not

* Both criminals and cops can attend Warfare. This incentivizes players to play daily to be seen more by CLO/DE and make their chances of joining higher

* Only DE and CLO can capture turfs. Cops/crims can only assist by killing, but still see the progress. In theory, DE would give orders to cops on where to go next via radio, and CLO would give orders to criminals (would need a new shared chat for this)

* DE and CLO can each have a total of 2 Hydras in the air at a time. Hydras can fire at opponents on the ground, prompting the other side to send their own Hydras to intercept. This would need some balancing though, so players don't ragequit from being bombed by hydras 

* Each turf starts as neutral and can only be captured once by each team. Let's assume when the event starts, CLO starts attacking LV Turf 1 and DE starts attacking SF Turf 1. After LV Turf 1 is captured by CLO, they would only be able to be captured by DE once. If DE succeeds in capturing LV Turf 1, the Turf would be locked and CLO wouldn't be able to capture it anymore. Similarly, if CLO successfully defends it, DE wouldn't be able to capture it anymore. Meaning, if there are 4 turfs and CLO captures 3 by the end of the war, DE capturing 1, CLO would win. If CLO captures 2 and DE captures 2, it's a tie. Either way, whoever wins, both sides get money for attendance and kills while the winning side gets slightly more.

[reket]

@Kain I wanted to respond to your comments as well on this topic. You mentioned that over the years, SAES developers have been focused on making cops less dependent on criminals starting activities, which is a good point, but that logic only works for the player base and activity SAES had in 2019. Today, the main problem is that criminals don't bother hosting bank robberies if they see too many cops in-game, so they just either quit or wait AFK until cops log off. The same applies for cops - I have seen multiple cops complain about just having to wait for hours for a bank robbery to happen. Both of these issues could be fixed by turning the current version of Public Bank Robbery into an event that happens every 1 or 2 hours. A different solution has to be figured out for Gang Bank Robberies though.