So heres my question that I've had for along time, but has never been really directly answered. Rewind to this time of year, 2018. GTM is poppin, consistent high player count, lots of devoted players, engaging gameplay, good economy, balanced weapon stats, and only a few bugs. What made the staff team decide to implement v2.7, and when it wasn't successful(so much so to the point that GTM's player count was dropped by 400), why wasn't it removed/fixed? It seems like their was an impossibly simple and obvious solution that would've fixed everything, yet was ignored. Maybe problems internally or something else? This is a very confusing topic for me, clarification would be appreciated.
Well, there are a lot of factors as to why GTM picked up and then slowed down. But, the "update" isn't one of them. Also your facts are a bit wonky because you only think about how it was and not the consequences of "time". Lets start by removing the things that don't matter toward what you asked. So the economy for example, this wasn't ruined by any version of GTM. It is a natural thing that when a server runs a long time eventually people start to get a lot of money. We didn't have any money sink in previous versions and only within the last 6 months have started finding ways to circulate the economy. So even if we didn't update GTM this would have happened sooner or later. Now lets gather some of the big things that probably made GTM slightly bigger at the time. Obviously these are not all the reasons and probably not even the biggest reasons as to why GTM was big. 1. We had a 1m subscribe youtuber doing videos actively for GTM 2. New GTM was still semi new and just like most new things they start out popular and then fall down 3. GTM5 was still pretty popular you would be shocked how many players say things like "Wow, I really enjoyed that [Anime] I wonder if there is a minecraft server based around it. So lets address those points A. It can be really hard to maintain the interest of a youtuber and when they leave sometimes so do those who follow. B. Everything starts big and eventually slows down. [My personal opinion on this I think that we could have made it last a little longer but I think that a lot of things piled up (which I will get to) and that speed up its decrease] C. Pretty self explainatory if a kid likes batman hes gonna go to walmart to find a batman toy. GTM5 was just popular in so it helped GTM. So if a GTM6 comes out we would probably see a jump in player count [But, again probably not a huge factor but definitely a factor] So lets talk about the huge factors that GTM slowed down. 1. We were pumping out updates without any regard for drawbacks [This was due to (unnamed someone) at the time] I think at this time there was a thing of pump out updates we will fix bugs later kind of thing. I think this is probably what contributed the most to people quitting. 2. Balance is always an issue. There was never a time where "balance" wasn't an issue. Saying there was a time current GTM is balanced is a visage people create in there minds when the kind of pvp they like is gone. Wingsuites and jetpacks have ruled GTM since early days and still currently do. 3. Jetpacking and wingsuiting. Its that simple this is the most viable and only viable pvp method. It is almost impossible to nerf these enough to the point that people would create multiple methods of pvp without completely destroying jetpacks and wingsuites. 4. Housing - This is another problem with time. Eventually servers get filled up and people start taking all the premium houses and then new players who come to the server can't find housing because they've all been eaten up. 5. Expert players - So I think this one is tough on the reasons list because I think the many bugs speed up the slow down of GTM player count. While this is probably what made GTMs player count stop the most. This ties in with housing as well when you are new you come to the server looking to play and you want all the necessities like a house and making a gang and finding gear. Unfortunately you could say that the expert veteran players kind of "kill there own food source" Expert players want new players to come on so they have something to pvp against. But, because its so difficult for new players to fight back because when you spawn as a newplayer onto the map you instantly often get fucked by a jetpacker or a wingsuite and they can be really hard to hit already for those who know how to hit them. But, imagine trying to figure that out as a new player? Then once you gotten over the hurdle of how to hide from jetpackers and wingsuiters you try to find a house and you realize the expert players got them all. So there wasn't anything really revertable because there was nothing to revert. Just bugs to fix it wasn't the "updates" that really did in 1000+ players. Of course we could say obviously theres a few who probably disliked mb even a decent amount. But, any game that comes out you have to realize "we can't please everyone" there were a ton of people who also enjoyed those updates. Just came with lots of bugs and then (un-named someone) didn't think about the consequences of leaving a trail of bugs.
I should have also probably added something that while out of GTMs control but also contributes to player count (this one a lot of people forget but I am not sure exactly how large this one is as far as how much effect it had) But, minecraft also ages just like other games eventually the player bases of games just slow down.
@KwonShiYun You make several good points however i think it's extremely ignorant to say the 'great unbalancing' was a non factor in the playercount. Many old and experienced players have said that that's the main reason, because it is. When you say that old players wanting to focus on killing new players you kinda prove my point. There used to be very competative minigun pvp before the 'great unbalancing', that all changed very quickly with 2.7 and as a result many many players left. Not only was the update bad but the team did nothing to fix it, at least for a while. It was a solid few months before any serious fixes were attempted.
1. I don't know what the monkey guy is but, we had a guy who did videos in german and basically thats why gtm4 is so populated by germans ! (I think maybe its not germany but its definitely not english). And, I do remember jakearator I liked him he was cool. 1.1. Youtubers just move on at some point and want to play different things. 2. You also have to consider that other servers are often minigame servers that are constantly interchanging different minigames so they often don't have one type of player base but many so say they have 5 minigames each minigame probably has about 100 players interested in them thats 500 players so we say GTM is only one game mode thats 100 players (of course that amount OBVIOUSLY isnt correct because were one game mode with 300-350 players but its just an example of what i mean) 2.1. As for "the only ones whining". Unfortuantely I can not agree with that it is a fact because we wouldn't make changes without hearing a majority of the community first that it just wasn't balanced. Players didn't enjoy the jetpackers or the wingsuiting. As for the "skill" part. You will also notice that a lot of games when t here is something with skill involved they will often break those players apart by skill level as GTM does not offer this because it wouldn't be fun for the better players. You may say "well other servers don't either" Your right except again they are also often short gamemodes or survival servers where you can play without dying for at least a few hours or more. GTM is swift but also not short game modes where your deaths and kills don't matter. 3. Your also correct here GTM is still popular! Just unfortunately its popular with the players who are winning. The best part is there are still a lot of players interested in GTM. Notice how our player base went from 200 on daily to 300 when GTM7 released. This is because players who join GTM7 get a slightly different experience since jetpacks and wingsuites are heavily nerfed. There is also a lot of housing its a good place for players to start new. This one is just simply fact. 4. So this ones a weird subject because I think you have to understand player base and how to be a youtuber to actually understand this one. So a huge issue with current GTMs set up is were rated MATURE this means theres guns obviously, swearing, racism occasionally. These things are not good for youtubers. So even if we were to offer to pay a youtuber its still very unlikely that they would say yes. Now that is big time youtubers the ones that would actually bring in players. Now when you talk about smaller time youtubers you have to consider how much a youtuber actually cost to do videos monthly now I mean small as in anywhere from 100k to 500k subs. They cost around 1k to 2k. Next is we have to consider how many players are they actually bringing in. Are we earning back what we are losing. Remember GTM cost money to run it isn't free. So we have to make back what we pay or its kinda pointless. So if you stack the fact that bigger youtubers won't do it because of the fact its rated mature and smaller yutubers won't do it because they want to much money. Its just not a good trade off. 5. I don't understand this one, but I think you are tying this one into balancing I think. And, you said a lot of players usually chalked it up to balancing. I have to disagree with this one because if I got on the server right now and said should I give you all a million dollars should I. I garuntee you there will be very little players who decline. Its a fact that veteran players like broken things. If you can take a minigun and blow off someones head with it your going to like it as a veteran because your more likely to have it. Its a fact that older models of the guns were not balanced. It may be true that a lot of those players qut because of balancing you may be right on that part but for a negative reason. And, while old community is important to us we have to make sure that we always have a new community coming into the server. As you will find again more often then not old community gets bored eventually and leaves. So old community needs to understand what it means to have balance. Of course I am not saying curent GTM is balanced because again theres only really 2 pvp methods in my opinion right now which is wingsuite and jetpack. But they are realyl hard to balance and were constantly trying to find ways to fix them. As for the balance you were talking about at that date is when wingsuites and jetpacks were even more busted then they are now. On second part now ! 6. I don't understand ths one either. The player base drop was sudden. According to statistics at least. It did have a bit of a trickle, but we assume this is from players "hoping" that these bugs were fixed. ANd, the chunk were the players who kind of rage quit. As for easy to detect and remedy. I think this one is something internally that I can't talk about because it was 1 person choosing when these bugs were fixed and how they got fixed. And, 100% honesty with you they did a horrible job and thats why you see less bugs now comparatively to before because we have different people working out these bugs. 7. Again I have to disagree this ties into my earlier statement. Not everyone coudl kill everyone. It was a fact that jetpacks and wingsuites were OP. I think what a lot of players don't understand is that we get a lot of messages more messages then you guys think about complaints on whats OP and whats not OP and whats balanced. A lot of people think were in the dark because we don't often respond. But, there were more complaints back then of how busted jetpacks and wingsuites were then there were complaints of us nerfing and there were a lot of people thanking us for those fixes. I think this is just again a lackof information on the players part where they just don't see the things we see. 7.1. In the nicest way possible you keep mentioniing "player base is booming" I think this is a moot thing. And, a "rude way" to argue. Because we could say that the day GTM had 5000 players was the best balanced play on GTM. When that just isnt a good argument. The size of the player base doesn't tell the story of how balanced a server is. We had 1.5k player because of many multiple reasons and lost those players due to many multiple reasons. And saying "it was balanced because GTM had 1.5k players" is a sad way to argue a point. You could say a lot of players told you there opinion and thats why. But, you can't act like its because we had more players. A lot of those players at the time told us there opinion. And, that is what made us update the server the way we did. As for "why we didnt revert when players were leaving" because players were not telling us theproblem was balancing. Now yes there was a few players who would say balancing was the issue and they would come to us. But, it wasn't a thing that a majority ws doing. (this one is again I think just a lack of information from the players part not seing the things that we see) 8. This one I partially agree with and disagree with. Again we established that my opinion on wingsuites and jetpacks are busted and just have always been busted. Even if you and many disagree with me. Its still a fact a fact that a lot of people told us otherwise. Now for the part that I do agree with the minigun did get nerfed and I agree that this probably had a huge part in jetpacks and wingsuites being even more OP. But on this statement I also think that again it will take a lot of new players time to figure out how to use a mini to kill a jetpacker or wingsuiter. And, as you said new players lack skill. But, we also didnt tell people that GTM was suppose to be a 100% skill based game. Its not we try to make it fair for everyone. So were gonna aim at helpng new players regardless of people saying hey cator to us big players. 9. If I had to personally pick how premium housing worked I think players should only be allowed to own 3 premium houses (personalyl I would even go as far as to say only 1 premium house) Think of it this way lets say that regular houses don't exist. If you have 100 premium houses on the server that means ou can only house 100 players. Its unfortunate but everyone is gonna want a premium house. That part is just a fact. I even get new players who know nothing about the game who come in and when there searching fora house to buy and they learn the differences between regular houses and premium houses they will usually opt into asking for a premium house. With that being said since we allow players to buy more then one premium house it means we can only house so many players. 9.1/10. I don't have players complain that they are bad without houses. Just a lot of players wanting to get a house. As for your last message I think that was pretty disrespectful to say and I will return it with one as so. I think its time for you as a player to open your eyes and just realize sometimes your a little more greedy then you realize. And, as for fixing weve increased 100 players in the past month. I think were on the right track to fixing things.
(also didn't realize the previous comment was owendog and not ianperu for the previous comment but I also responded to you in my leangthy comment just said it as ianperu as my response as to why the "staff team did nothing to fix it". While I agree that we didn't fix it the way you wanted us to and I 100% agree that we didn't fix it the moment you wanted us to. I still refuse to agree that it was balancing as you are 2 players out of many that contacted us about these issues. And while yes there were also many that contacted us about this and told us that they didnt like the update. Its simply that the people who preferred it outweighed the ones who disliked it. And, if you told me otehrwise then you would only label yourself as I said "greedy" because its not the way you want it when we are the ones who hear the players because they are in our dms and not yours)
I think that the best thing to do RN is focus on the future and how we can keep both new and old players interested. 2.7 is in the past and although it's still not fixed gtm is doing okay for itself. Lets be real, gtm is centered around jping. That's gtm's uniqye twist on gta and it's why players stick around so much. The reality of jping is that there is such a large skill gap it's almost impossible for new players to take to the skies and find success. The best way to fix this IMO is to lower the price of jp's in shop to 80K, that way it's easier for new players to get practice and it also nerfs the endluss dubs of JP's that old players have. Another thing that i think should be done is make the flying scene on gtm4 more gun based, this will add an interesting twist to jping for old players. (Also gtm4 should not be labeled as "german", it's driving all the new players to 1 and 7) And i believe the YTer u guys are talking about is epicstun, a german dude with a few mil subs. You can still see his influence on the playerbase today by looking at IGN's. We also had a large spanish YTer called White Zunder who i believe was less popular and only had a few vids on gtm.
Hello owen! Much better response compared to the first one. I agree that GTM is centered around jetpacking as its different and addictive for some people. It is also one of the reasons we don't remove it. I think the problem is as you said there is a large skill gap. But, I don't agree with the method of fixing it. The first reason I don't agree with the method of fixing it is because you use the argument of the jetpacks are expensive if we lower the prices maybe it will be easier for new players. Unfortunately this is incorrect because the majority of the players that suffer from the jetpack are players who only get onto the map for a few minutes. There is not enough time to gather 80k. So even then 80k would be to much money for the new player. Players who are willing to go onto the map more then a few times enough to gain 80k end up embedding themselves into the community a little longer. You would be shocked though how many players actually drop the game after getting killed on the map instantly after dying once. (no really there are actually a lot of players who rage quit after there first death). So lowering the jetpacks to 80k doesn't really help the "new players" as for nerfing the amount of jetpacks that big players hold onto isnt really a concern or even something that we think about. Because its not actualyl stopping anyone from using them. I think the only thing that lower the price of it would do is make the economy worse then it already is As for what you said about GTM getting better YES! GTM has had a rise in the player base and its been slowly increasing upward. I think this is thanks to GTM7 as most of our new players seem to migrate there. As there are a lot of "mixed things" that entice them to be there comparatively to GTM1. I did mean epicstun, and yes GTM4 is basically where we put him with the other german speakers sincethere were so many and still are many. WhiteZunder has also currently been helping us out recently which is also probably a good player base increase reason. (Lets keep in the future to the non insulting post so I don't have to block the thread. xD)
80K is much better then the 275 that nobody uses. Plus the JP market cant get much more inflated, after years of kits, crates, and players buying them, Jp's are about as common as noobs on gtm1 for old players. There are only 2 things that would get me to come back to gtm. 1. Minigun pvp and mechanics are brought back to their former glory. 2. Jping becomes more gun based (on gtm4) And 3, remove language descriptions for the servers. With less new german players starting every day gtm4 really is dying. At least at night in est timezone.
Here's what started GTM's downfall in my opinion (This is out of the current senior team's control, and was mainly caused by the certain someone Kwon mentioned before who I will leave unnamed, so don't blame/start a flame war with the seniors about this, they are doing all they can to resolve this): The economy / transfer system Firstly, the economy was a main factor in GTM's downfall as it was heavily inflated, by duping. I won't go into full details on the extent of the duping, and who the dupers were (some of which are unbanned now), however it fucked certain servers hard (GTM 2 for example). Now, this wouldn't be too much of a problem in hindsight, as before the transfer you have 6 different servers, each with their own economy, meaning if one server was affected by duping and inflation, such as GTM2, the server and prices will adapt to match it, and wouldn't affect other servers (Which GTM2 did adapt to). However, when you introduce a transfer system to the mix, things can get ugly. You have people with $200-300mil on GTM2 before the transfer, and people with $20-50mil on GTM6, both of these were considered the richest on each server respectively. And when you mix 6 different economies into 2 servers, the economy gets fucked to say the least, and several people got fucked over by this, especially on GTM1 (Before the transfer, nobody had more than a few dubs of katanas, however after the transfer, people had stacked dubs of 64 katanas, destroying the value of katanas). Furthermore, these problems were made worse by the fact that the certain individual in-charge of managing bugs did shitall to actually fix these duping bugs, meaning people could continue to dupe (I would know as I was the person who discovered these bugs, and brought them to this person's attention), and this problem went on for 3-4 months before something was actually done about it, primarily on GTM2. Also, due to certain staff policies at the time (I don't know if it's the same today), people could have alts dupe for them, then transfer the items to their main, all on the same IP, and nothing could be done about it (only the alts get banned), meaning people could easily get away with doing this. Also, in other cases, large, major economy-breaking bugs took hours to resolve (This may seem quick, however people could earn around $5mil in around 5 minutes with these bugs, and took no effort no perform). This was primarily due to the same person, as he was the only one who could mange bugs, and by the time he finally whitelisted the servers to resolve this w/ the devs, the damage was already done, luckily there was a backup from a few hours ago). In the worst-case scenario of one of these, it took 3 days to find out the bug, and the server had to be rolled back 3 days after a hobo reported the bug on the forums (https://grandtheftmc.net/threads/trash-can-glitch.138/). And these are only the situations off the top of my head and can be bothered going into detail about (without completely stabbing the senior team in the back), there were other bugs and stories about anonymous bounties, devs forgetting to put a permission on /giveweapon and /giveitem, unlimited store credit, godmode (i was completely ignored when reporting this glitch btw, nobody cared about it), etc. However, in the senior team's defence, a large amount of these were out of their control, as only one person managed bugs, and focused on updates instead of actually fixing bugs. The transfer system had to be implemented or else you would have several dying servers (and I actually respect GTM for adding that system in, GTM5 was no fun without players), and despite the economy getting fucked, it is recovering and is providing a brighter future for GTM.
I disagree about the eco having such a huge part in the downfall, yes it did have an effect. But as you said, "servers adapt" Also... who else remembers that vid when buziat killed a duper and got a stack of jp's?
Too Owendog: Uhh I think you misunderstand owendog I am glad there are "276" unused jetpacks I hope people use them less? I think the difference is your goal is to get people to use jetpacks more. My goal is to get them to use jetpacks less. So our opinions are differing in that aspect so I wouldn't exactly say "80k better then having 276 unused jetpacks" because taht just sounds like a good thing to me xD. Good to know were having an impact on the jetpack usage thank god finally. As for the "coming back to GTM". So I think this one is a you problem and not an us problem. We are always happy when players come back and were ALWAYS happy to have new players. But, when we do something theres always gonna be one person or many people that don't like the way we do things. We didn't create everything and say "okay does owendog like these changes?" We did it based off of a lot of the community telling us this or that. And sure, maybe the community was wrong sometimes when they said they think minigun is too OP. But, most of the decisions on what goes through a nerf what goes through a buff is all done by players. In fact we have a group of players that pvp actively now that actually test things and tell us there opinions. This was also something we had when those "issues" were going around. So were not trying to get you to come back to GTM trust me thats not our goal our goal is to make it the best it can be for the players who want to be a part of what we have. If its not for you then its not for you. To iTraitor I agree with all of this I just don't think that eco was a huge downfall. I think it definitely contributed. But, I don't know how much effect it actually had we got some people complain about the economy but it wasn't a huge complaint after the transfer. But, we do know that GTM2 economy was way different and fluctuated. To Ianperu Its okay I get that you want to be real but to say the things the way you did and then just say its time to open your eyes after you were only really saying "well, people told me" "well, the player base was bigger" its like that doesn't tell me that the game was balanced all that tells me is some players told you and that the player base was bigger. But, I garuntee you the amount of messages we got about what was wrong with what we did and didnt do and what was appropriate for what we did and didnt do was more then the messages you got. So its natural for me to say "well it sounds like you got a few messages and your just assuming that everyone felt that way" But, I am glad you apologized none the less I like having threads like this to help the community understand things from our point of view. When there are so many opinions flying around and sometimes we can't even say everything we know. So its great when we can finally share things with the community from our side but without insulting. But, more of a understanding. Ian about the jetpacking thing and actually using guns THIS IS EXACTLY what we are trying to achieve. We want ground pvp to be viable. In my honest opinion I think one of the ways to do this is to simply make ground pvp "enjoyable" I think in general its fun but the jetpackers kind of ruin that and make it unfun. But, I think if we were to add something that made it more fun then I think that people would purely choose it over the jetpacking. But, its hard to balance jetpacking to the point where we make ground pvp a viable method. We could of course buff ground PVP but its hard to buff it to the point where its better then jetpacks without making it to "over powered". (Again I don't agree that pvp was an actual balanced thing at one point maybe in legacy though.) As for the jetpack thing its again hard to balance and something were always trying to do. As for the reset. This is what GTM7 is, I don't know when the last time you were a part of the GTM community as far as logging in goes of course. But, GTM7 is a reset of the map with a nerfed jetpack so its popular form of pvp is ground pvp and very rare do you find people who use a jetpack. It gets decently popular on the weekends. in the early hours (7AM-2PM MST). We held a vote which consisted of the community if we should reset gtm1 or create a reset version of the server. The community voted for a reset version of the server. So that is what we did.
(also didn't get time to read everything you wrote about the jetpacks ian as I had to fast read and fast response as my time got cut short. Which was why my line of "as for the jetpack thing" was so short. Sorry, and will catch up tomorrow.)
Of course it's not about me, i was just saying that those are changes i'd like to see and would actually make me want to play. @IanPeru a full reset would cause an uproar in the community. Believe me i've thought about it extensively before and it would honestly be really healthy for gtm... except for the massive portion of the community that would quit. @KwonShiYun you will never get ppl out of the skies without either giving them a major nerf or killing a large part of the server. What would be cool is a rust in MC server, kinda like an HCF with guns.