Too Much Info for an Announcement: A TRP Newsletter

Feedback Results, Campfire Sessions, and More

TLDR

Feedback summary:

Improve communication, increase dev updates, server pop is pewp.

1st Campfire Session:

Sat, Aug 16 at 5pm PST on Twitch

BOLO

New Feedback forum coming to the Community category in the TRP Discord

Campfire Session content submissions announcement coming soon.

FiveM server action plan TBA @ Campfire Session

Hi Folks!

I have a lot of information for you. Too much for an announcement. Hope that’s ok! First off:

Thank you so much for participating in our feedback request!

We’ve reviewed your responses, and in summary: We’re all on the same page! The concerns we saw most repeated had to do with communication, dev updates to server mechanics, and low server pop.

These same concerns were mirrored in our staff/alumni (former staff) feedback, and highlighted by the focus group I mentioned in the announcement. As I get back into the swing of things from what I’ll call maternity leave (lul) – that seems pretty cool.

Many of you also took time to point out how much you care about the TRP community and our main goal is to foster the sense of belonging and enjoyment that made TRP feel like home to so many of us in the first place. Your feedback, along with our direct observation and experience (we see what you do), and data from server logs and tickets, will directly inform our plan of action over the next several months.

Comms

We’ve got a lot ideas on the table in terms of improving communication. This will be the area you’ll see our plans in motion first, starting with Campfire Sessions on Twitch and a new Discord forum for suggestions and feedback, both of which will be rolling out in August.

Wtf is a Campfire Session, you may be wondering. Imagine a podcast about TRP, broadcast live on Twitch. Shorter and more focused that our community meetings of the past, and much more frequent. Our goal will be to communicate news, changes, and challenges in a digestible, entertaining way so that players know what the staff team is up to and how we’re supporting our community’s goals. We’ll also be highlighting players and RP that showcases the amazing talent and creativity on our servers. Keep an eye out for our submissions request in order to participate!

The feedback forum will be covered in detail during our first Campfire Session. We’ll be utilizing a forum structure to leverage tags and reactions in order to keep organized and up to date. While this will be a more focused and concise platform than an open channel might be, we have tested the process out in our staff discord and found it to be more effective. We don’t want your ideas getting lost in the shuffle!

We’ve got plenty more ideas being work-shopped to increase communication from Staff to Players and vice versa, but for now I’ll stick to what we’re actively doing!

Dev

Listen, development for both the RedM and FiveM servers has been slow. We’re aware! Unfortunately this is not an easily solved problem.

On the RedM side of things, you’ve likely noticed some stellar devlogs from MollyPop. They’ve been learning the ropes with help from Isingrel and Elementz, making small but mighty updates and fixes as they go. Much of our RedM dev team has been sidelined by IRL responsibilities and that is unlikely to change in the near future. As we get new folks on-boarded, our goal is more frequent devlogs and more consistent, small updates.

FiveM is in a tougher spot. Due to the availability of the Dev team, we’re not in a position to maintain the quality and cadence of updates we believe is needed. However, we’re discussing ideas to decrease development overhead while increasing opportunity to implement creative and fun new experiences. We plan to have more specific information to share at our first Campfire Session.

Both teams are in the process of training up new developers, which will be a big help! If you’ve got experience with Cfx, Lua, C#, Javascript, 3d modeling, etc, get an application to us! We’d love to talk to you.

Pop

Server pop is a huge challenge and it’s compounded by developer availability.

As mentioned above, we’re looking at more frequent but smaller updates to help keep things fresh and improve quality of life. Most likely, community building will be our main focus for increasing players on servers, as opposed to large-scale feature development. Options in discussion include re-introducing seasonal games, increasing our stream team engagement, server-wide events, improving our website and guides, etc.

Unfortunately we’re also discussing the reality of server costs – the expense of running an empty server isn’t one I can personally justify for long. While we hope to increase our dev staff and output, we likely won’t be able to do that without an increase in pop, particularly for FiveM (pop is a vicious circle). On the positive side, the FiveM team of Devs and Staff that we do have, while lean, is extremely passionate and dedicated. Though we can’t operate as-is indefinitely, please know that these folks are doing all they can to ensure the community has avenues to explore GTA RP.

Expenses

I’ll have a specific breakdown of server expenses ready for our Campfire, for those curious. We’ll also be announcing a contribution-match fundraiser sponsored by a long-time community member. In the meantime, your Tebex purchases are helping us keep the lights on, thank you! And a big thank you to several staff members who have donated funds on top of their labor. <3

Kaypocalypse

Curator

TRP player since 2016, RP server management since 2017, TRP Curator since 2022. Enjoys investigations and crime. Just crime.