[TommyB]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LocMax I'd like to point out that a lot of servers and communities would use the 0.3.7 DL version but are held back by the fact that a very big load of players is still in 0.3.7 and unaware of the new version, the big servers that are known in SA-MP for years have no problems switching because of their reputation and notoriety in SA-MP, but smaller servers would lose a big chunk of players, especially due to the fact that a lot of players are young, perhaps not so good with English and having them go through the website, download and update by themselves would (and usually did for a period in past updates) cause a loss of players. I would suggest an option in the client, when a player attempts to connect to a server in a newer version, to either allow him to download and install the client update from there (from the SA-MP client) or some other more convenient method to make players aware of new SA-MP updates, and make it easier for server owners to switch without affecting player count by a lot.

I run a server on 0.3.DL and I can absolutely see why people are afraid to move to it. I moved to 0.3.DL with the release of one of the biggest updates in my server's history, which went pretty well. Our player count peaked pretty high and everything seemed to be okay. Over time I noticed the amount of new accounts had dipped, but I didn't really worry too much about it since concurrent players were still more or less the same, albeit a little less robust at certain times of the day. My playerbase has never been super consistent in the first place, so I shrugged it off. It also helps that most of what's left of the English heavy RP community is already on 0.3.DL since LS-RP had also moved, as well as as some DM servers where roleplayers like to spend time, so word of mouth likely still brings a decent amount of people to my server.

As time went on and usual months where player counts dip hit, I decided to look into the amount of new players I was getting per month and it had more or less been cut in half. If you look at the image below, you can note the amount of new players dipping in February. I moved to 0.3.DL towards the end of that month, and you can see the snowball effect being off the 0.3.7 server lists caused.




I run a fairly popular server which a lot of people in the English heavy RP community know about, and I've felt the effects of being away from most of SA-MP's userbase. I can't imagine how less popular servers would do, especially servers that aren't application based.