Whitelist vs Non-Whitelist

Jack

Pokimane is my e-girl.
Hi everyone,

There have been a few suggestions going around mentioning the idea of whitelisting the server. I have decided to make this post to clear up what affect I personally believe this will have on the community as a whole.

The Pro's
People tend to feel that a whitelist is more of a privileged, we have found that people that "get whitelisted" on a server tend to behave more appropriately and by the book in order to keep that whitelist, compared to a public server where you are automatically granted access and only risk losing it.
Its the idea of valuing something you put more work into compared to something you don't put as much work into, regardless of physical value.
We all do it, even if you don't realise it! This usually allows us to aim for a much higher quality of roleplay.

Queue times would be reduced as well as the chances that of a hacker causing havoc would drop (as they would have to go through an interview process and then not get caught by the anticheat on top of that).

The Con's
Server growth would plummet. Many of you say "oh we are already hitting full slots every day of the week in our peaks, we don't need to grow anymore", this is where I have to tell you - your wrong.
For a company, community or project to be successful continuous growth is a requirement. Whitelisted servers that we compare ourselves to on the regular do this through good social media engagement, streaming or sometimes the servers are outright owned or reimbursed by someone with a large influence sphere.

Requiring new players to submit a application to be able to get on the server would hinder our server list intake (which for the record makes up around 94% of all new player traffic as of making this post). Many people ask what is the need for new players to join, we have enough people to fill up the server now anyway - it is imperative for people to see new people and new ideas enter the community. A server of the same people day-in, day-out will result in stale, boring and repetitive roleplay which can leave a long lasting effect on the community.

The amount of labour it requires is astronomical compared to what we are doing right now. The public server currently takes an administration team of 4 + a development team of 4 as well as a moderator team of 15+ people to ensure that we are bringing decent response times to everything you guys ask from us. Introducing another forum page or application process would only add to this never-ending task. If we did go forward with such an idea we could put into place a "trusted community members" system to allow you guys to keep up with the applications along with the staff team.

Conclusion
Lifetime Roleplay/Interactive/India/Whatever we want to class this as now - is growing at a rapid rate, we are all excited for it and i'm really proud to be part of the project and pushing it to what I can see as a bright future.
I'm not trying to hide the fact whitelisted is always an end goal of ours. However we cant just "jump" into it without ensuring we are absolutely ready, some of the old players know we tried this before and it flopped pretty well, introducing consequences that we never really recovered from.

This is an open discussion because I want to hear your opinions and supposed fixes for the issues I have brought up as well as the ones that other people mention however please don't ask if opening two servers (a whitelisted and non-whitelisted variant) that card isn't on the table simply because splitting a big community makes two smaller communities making the issues I raise above much, much more apparent.

But to clarify, we will not be making a move to whitelisted until both the staff team and community are on board and are ready for the tasks it will bring.
 

HoodiePlays

New member
i disagree, i feel as if we shouldn't be whitelisted yet. we need way more exposure before we can even think about this. we just need harsher punishments for RDM and NITRP
 

Nathan Ding

Civilian
Here's my 2 cents worth id say have part whitelisting have it whitelisted at peak times then none whitelisted when it's nonpeak I have to disagree with full whitelisting as early morning EU there's only around 15-20 people in the city where the rest of the spots can just get filled with randoms if we take away this option there will be no new players joining unfortunately
 

Pastafari710

New member
As much as i want to agree with having the server whitelisted i do think its truly smart to not have a whitelist at this moment we truly need to grow a little more maybe come back to this idea next month and see where everyone is at.
 

UncreatedLemon

New member
There could be a happy medium between the two, perhaps having the server unlocked when an admin / moderator is on and willing to moderate / be an admin (and doesn't have prior RP events occurring that they are attending), and then have it locked for when they are not around.

It could be as simple as having the server not show up in the server list when no admin is on duty, and showing its visibility when they are. Players who are part of the discord can use !connect command to get in and enjoy the city.

[Below is added after a really shitty night in the city, lots of craziness and almost no RP]
Ultimately Whitelisting or some kind of filter is needed I think, I'm seeing a lot of RP being ruined by people who have very little regard or desire to role-play out a situation. I'm not sure of the best way to fix it, is the server Identity to maintain a high level of serious RP? or is it more of an economy (grind for cash) style server?

One of my reporters was shot several times today, simply because he is part of the media (he wasn't in anyone's hideout or meeting...just happened because he was alone and driving our high visibility vehicle). When I got on to record a citizen's arrest occurring, I got a few seconds in before a crowd of people stormed into the police building and laid waste to it, glitching through doors, yelling and hollering and breaking the entire RP scenario that was unfolding.

It adds certain frustrations, especially when there is no regard and often power role-playing is put in place by these players, forcing people who actually role-play, to go along with this forced narrative. There should be no reason you take a journalist hostage, move them down the street 20 meters, then release them "For the lolz". All we end up doing, is wasting time in a weak or non-existent role-play scenario that we didn't want or can't role-play out of.

We've also had our vehicle stolen and intentionally rammed into locals and residents, before being handed back the vehicle with a "nice drive bruh"....there is zero place for this play-style in a serious role-play server, hence my question as to what level of RP is the server as a whole aiming to get to?

I believe that saying to record these instances and upload them is only going to get us a small win, sometimes it's even hard to capture what happened, who did it and what the effect of the action was. We need to be able to filter the players, whether by whitelisting or only allowing public players in when an admin is on duty and ready to enforce the RP rules and guidelines, recording and reporting should be the last defense, used when filters and administrative actions cannot preemptively take care of the situation.

This server provides so much to it's players, in terms of stability, functionality, active staff and well picked resources...however, the players themselves seem to be lacking the drive to create an authentic and immersive role-play experience in the server, and are rather chasing the "win" or simply playing GTA:Online with jobs.

Cheers,
Smithy / Alex Krass
 
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Bibz

New member
Whitelisting will become stagnet after a while I agree. I think the server is amazing, especially for as young as it is, and may have outgrown the level of success that was assumed, in a much shorter period than expected. Some recruiting of more seasoned well trained Police officers to come in and help enforce a realistic level of order would filter out some of those just wanting to "try RP" fresh off the GTAO. I have been in the server for a week now and over 40 hours in character, and only encountered law enforcement 1 time where i was the victim and the entire RP scene fell apart due to lack of a few things. 1- Time, the officers were inundated with calls and seemed almost unsure of what was going on or what to do(not due to lack of knowledge or training) about it.. 2- Other players trying to enter an already developing scenario to get officers to make them priority and destroying any chance at RP for those of us involved. The officers can not enjoy this either as they can't start and finish a scenario without interruption. 3- Lack of realism. When you try to run a jeep off the road while riding a motorcycle and get ran over by highway traffic, it's not realistic that you show up 5 minutes later and take the occupants of the jeep hostage and kill them, while officers simply drive away to another call they assume is higher priority, without finishing the scenario you called them to report.

Now my point is not to complain about the situation as it's water under the bridge. My point is that if the criminal element is not getting arrested, fined and jailed at a level that makes them think twice about just killing someone for no reason, multiple daily kidnappings of the same players, and stealing police cars to impersonate officers without prior notification, then they have no reason to follow other rules.

In the time I've been on this week, encompassing all time blocks of the day, from a full server with 12 in queue, to only 11 players total, I have noticed only 3 or 4 times a person was sent to prison (bottom right corner), and have watched multitudes of Twitter posts about people being kidnapped multiple times, sold into slavery, robbed numerous times in a day, and killed for trying to get to their apartment without paying or giving up something of value. I also spoke with many new players trying to accurately RP and be involved in the community in a positive supporting role, that were very excited about the function of the server but were turned off or away by the level of unaddressed and obviously unrealistic RP from others.

Realism is the goal, and our fine officers have no chance of overcoming the crime rate if 75% of the population is waiting until they arrive in the city to all start committing crimes at the same time. I am of the belief that this will lead to officers not wanting to report for duty, become allies with certain factions or characters to make their play more enjoyable which somewhat sounds fair, but ruins the basic fundamental reasons to RP.

In closing, whitelisting is great for those of us looking for content and character development, but closes the door on other great players, characters, and overall growth and evolution of an ever-changing city.

Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help. I have tried to help players fresh off the train today kind of get a grasp on the basic functionality and pitfalls of the city. Discord and the website are full of rules and answers to most questions unrelated to The obvious things that need RP to develop, but most appear to not even read or pay attention to them. Don't get down on yourselves to much, because you are doing an excellent job, and some people will always try to find something wrong. Unfortunately with FiveM you could be the best dev team, owner, and staff, and people will still find a problem, complain, and ask for more. Keep up the good work!

P.S. HUGE KUDOS for the Dev Podcast!!! Very professional and for those into the scripts, code, bugs and general server side of things, its awesome that you can be that transparent and in touch with your players.

Bibz-Stan Tapp
 
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