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This will be the culmination of a few months of thoughts and ideas that myself and fellow community members have had about the current state of Strayagaming, and in particular, Altis Life. To start with, the slow decline of the Strayagaming is noticeable- with the population on servers dwindling down to single digits on weekends and during holiday breaks. While this may not be the case for all servers, like Invade and Annex which has seen a stable player base ranging from 20-50 players at a given time during peak hours; Altis Life has seen low numbers with population spikes during updates and events, however closer criticism in regards to events and updates will be covered later. Naturally of course, its unreasonable to expect the server to perform with good population (40-70 players) all day, every day. However, many roleplaying servers manage to maintain a solid player-base which returns on evenings, weekends and holidays to have fun with some mates. Altis life lacks the core component of why the majority of people play games- fun. There are some aspects of the server which are fun such as banks, robberies, capture points and events; but these are only fun for so long, as after a while people get bored with the exact same gangs doing banks, fighting at capture points and the same events being recycled over and over again. Even the roleplay component of the server has taken a toll, with it hard to find people willing to talk and take part in arguably the most core component of any “Life” server. Updates As of now the lack of updates for Altis Life has been in the minds of many players for months- with the last update being v11.6, on the 3rd of December 2019. This update brought about mostly changes for the APD, with new outposts being added as well as minor bug fixes. The last major update with server-wide content was v11.5, with the introduction of adrenaline and the gang fund system. While these updates have introduced new content and mechanics, nothing implemented within the last 3 months has contributed to player fun and enjoyment. Furthermore, the lack of transparency about updates is detrimental to the hype and the effect that talking about such things has on attracting new players. If Strayagaming was to release teaser videos showing bits and pieces of upcoming updates, it would be highly beneficial to letting people know that the management team still cares about the server- rather than having no talk or any information about updates (if there even is one coming). This feeling of being left in the dark is so impactful on people that it has and will continue to drive players off the server and out of the community. Even this issue has been recognised by server staff, with quotes such as: “There needs to be content for everyone to do. Such as, challenges, levelling system etc. Give people an enjoyable reason to play and the player pop might increase”. “Civs needs more activities / jobs to do. Jobs such as repair men, taxi drivers, bounty hunters could all be implemented to some degree on Altis life. Civilians don't have much of a choice when it comes to legal activities that can be rewarding”. However, a potential strategy for update releasing is to do updates once every 1-2 months with new content and ideas to continuously change up what happens on the server, so that there is an element of enjoyment for all. Events The recent spike in events being held is an attempt to increase server population- not with a solution, but rather a Band-Aid. It works for the time of the event, but once it’s over the server population will fall back down into single digits. Even the events, which were fun and enjoyable to do every Friday evening- with a range of things like Pawnee battles, de-sync derby and other PVP games; have now become old and boring. Take for instance the most recent event, “The Purge”. This event is being held over two days, with 3 hours allocated for The Purge to be run, but the population has peaked on the 22nd of February at around the mid-20s. Before the downfall of events, they would attract upwards of 20-30 people onto the server looking to have a fun time after a hard week at school or work- but now its just another thing to add onto the list of dead and worn-out solutions. Perhaps we can see the return of events in a new and interesting fashion in the future. Community The lack of engagement led by the Strayagaming staff team is a large contributor to the lack of new population across its services. The number of new players for many servers has fallen as people who are new to the game or are trying something new perhaps don’t even know of the existence of Strayagaming. The introduction of a dedicated social media/promotions team would be of great benefit, as it would be able to tap into the massive amounts of people on social media at any given time- and then spread the community name and servers to new and keen players looking to have a fun time. For example, the Strayagaming twitter account has not been used since December 2018- almost 14 months of inactivity from it. This account could be used to announce updates, changes, giveaways and major items on a platform that many individuals will have in their pockets during the day and night. Secondly, the introduction of an Instagram account would also be used in the same way as the twitter account, but perhaps being used to share promotional material and larger updates that require photos and/or videos to fully show off features. From what I can gather, this idea is in the works but who knows how long it could take for it to be implemented. Finally, the Strayagaming podcast is a great medium for items such as interviews and news to be delivered in a simple form. There have already been moves to put this into play, and hopefully in the future we can see the podcast return in a new and revamped style. Final Remarks The main thing to take away from this is from my eyes at least, communication. It is so important to let players know of what’s coming up in digestible and accessible forms, so that they aren’t feeling like they are in the dark or perhaps playing on a dead server. Who knows if these ideas will be taken into consideration but its worth a shot since many of us have spent countless hours playing in this community, and it’s sad to see it slowly crumbling away. Nonetheless, I hope that we can bring Strayagaming back to the way it was, with an active and engaged community.

Could we add a bank in where you get the see the vid of smokey doing it on stream? +1 no communication skills from the staff team 80% of the time.

you done nothing, all you did was spawn a shitton of admin gear into ur house and hop on once a month to do a fed.

Before I delve into my response to the points you've made, I would like to briefly acknowledge and thank you for taking the time to write up this thread in such a mature and constructive manner. As Altis Life is outside of my direct prerogative, I will only respond to your feedback pertaining to the community and events in general. The transparency and communication between the staff team and community has, I agree, been an area in which all departments could see some major improvement. While things are usually progressing well behind the scenes, I can see that updates on our progress aren't being made public and hence cultivating low morale among our players - this is something we will endeavour to work on. "The introduction of a dedicated social media/promotions team would be of great benefit, as it would be able to tap into the massive amounts of people on social media at any given time- and then spread the community name and servers to new and keen players looking to have a fun time." This is something that falls directly within the purview of the Community Team. Social media, as you have described, is a very powerful tool that when utilised correctly can greatly improve the efficacy of our marketing strategies. In recent times, our use has been limited for a number of reasons; As we have predominantly been an Arma 3 community, we have had little need to break outside our bubble. Players find us through the server browser and through word of mouth. Running giveaways on social media sites never really worked... folks usually don't like having to use their personal accounts to enter a giveaway. The majority of our regular players have discord and/or an account on the forums. Creating publications on these platforms is simply easier and provides us with greater control over the content. Maintaining 5+ social pages is a lot of work... These points aside, I am looking at revitalising our current social pages in the coming weeks to support our new prospective services such as Space Engineers and Rust. If you have any suggestions regarding what content is published, please hit me up in discord. We have a number of major changes coming to the forums and TeamSpeak soon as well; stay tuned. Podcast sounds awesome - I look forward to working on it with you as discussed in TeamSpeak. I am more than happy to discuss these points further or answer any questions you might have, just ask. I tend to float around in TeamSpeak most nights after 8/9PM AEST.

Won't work, staff don't wanna improve the server

died when the best rebel centred Snr Mod got the flick tbh

It doesn't matter if the player base is low or if it is high. I've seen staff in the past who take a much better approach to dealing with rule breakers. In my opinion, the best way to deal with minor rule breaks like rdm, vdm, fail rp and all that other shit, is to get the 2 players to talk and make one comp the other, or lets say if someone is constantly vdming, then a mod can just vipe some vehicles from their garage. There's always another approach instead of just banning people straight out. Don't get me wrong, if someone is cheating or hacking, that should definitely be a bannable offense. But rule breaks like rdm, vdm, vlr and fail rp can all be dealt with another way. The problem is, banning people doesn't stop the person from breaking rules. Most civs/rebels don't care enough to walk on egg shells trying to not break rules, cuz they realise it's just a game and a ban literally just gives that player a nice break. Banning only affects people like cops cuz they can lose their ranks or whitelisting. As for your comment on James and management, I agree on that.

Even if the current staff DO try and improve it, they'll just **** it up even more. They think their events will help, and they don't even tryy and keep the player base. They're itching to ban people instead of using other methods like forcing that player comp the other player. Or using other creative methods. People get fat bans just for killing a stupid medic, it's retarded.

Only thing we can do at this point is hope that they change their attitude towards the server

that's 10 right there, more than fegget and martyn combined.

The only reason banning people is as big of an issue as it is now is due to a lack of players. I don't think staff should be anymore lenient based on that, it's principal. It seems that everytime community complains about an update not being there or a lack of news regarding it, it gets dropped onto James by whoever the server Manager is/are. But in discord to James has said that is "up to bouda & asnee (current managers)" so it just seems like management as a whole has no idea what the **** they want to do and has the planning ability of a 5 year old. James doesn't want to accept the fact that HE is Senior Management and be the one held accountable for where things are or aren't going.