Pop count

[dubz1019]

Hi all

Just wanted to ask a question in regards to the player count. I was banned in 2020 and was recently given the opportunity at redemption. As happy as I am to be unbanned, ive noticed the last week or so of playing, the player count has dramactically shrunk since I was last apart of the community. Like I remember having to queue and sh*t at one point (obvs covid had a part to play dont get me wrong).  Makes me lowkey sad to see it now struggling to push past double digits. I understand ragemp is shutting down and eclipse is migrating, but surely this doesnt explain the full story. Anyways im just trying to catch up on some of the gossip since then and I was hoping some of the og's are still around to explain why. I'm also curious as to what you think the devs could do differently when we migrate to fivem to boost the player count and what theyve implemented thats potentially caused this. I'd imagine its a multitude of factors rather than just one

Im also not making this to bait or disrespect the server and its dev team btw. Im genuinely just curious as I've obviously missed ALOT. Would be grateful for any insight and thanks in advance

Edited Friday at 10:23 AM by dubz1019

[Ash]

Whilst I don’t agree with all the below points, these tend to be the key points used in complaints:

- dev work is few and far between with updates over the years. They put out a roadmap in late 2025 and failed to meet the commitments there even which decreased peoples opinions on the effort being put into the server from the dev side

- royal vip was added with higher cost and more benefits such as very low jail time, this annoyed a bunch of people ranging from those thinking its devs being greedy to people being unhappy with how “pay to win” it is

- the usual cop vs crim argument is ongoing with both sides disliking the other and never being happy, the mentality around this is really bad as no change is ever good enough for people

- some people were unhappy with the direction both illegal and legal faction management was/is going, several gangs have disbanded and left the server citing this

- various bans for cheaters, evaders, mass rule breakers resulted in entire gangs shutting down and people leaving as a result

- The general obvious one is gta rp is just dying. Between people losing interest, and others just not bothering to play until the fivem migration happens it affects player count

overall it’s just a combination of factors mostly resulting in the main people active are those suffering with sunk cost fallacy or those holding hope the fivem migration might bring a nice influx of old and new since if the server is mostly 1:1 ecrp will be in a position where it’ll be quite unique compared to most of the fivem copy-and-paste slop.

personally I think the main issue is people’s mentality of always wanting more or things changed instead of just..having fun and roleplaying. And the focus on assets is another big one for example people don’t show up to fun events unless there’s a raffle for a car or something which is a piss poor mentality to have on an rp server.

covid probably accounted for the drop to sub-200 but we were at 100-200 consistently for a long while from covid. I think the rest is a combination of issues

Edited Friday at 08:39 AM by Ash

[LordOfTheRing]

Hey, I've joined the server when COVID was a thing, and I've been playing on and off up until 2023. I've recently came back, and honestly, I wasn't expecting this. I still remember the server being busy and having police/gangs and random people roaming around, but now it's even hard to find a soul on the map. I don't mean to be toxic, so please don't get me wrong, but this is literally what's been happening. I literally played for 2 days, and the first impression was "this is so boring". I do like the server, and I think the devs did a great job with the scripts, but why are so many people leaving?? It seems that a ton of people got banned over different types of rule breaks, which begs the question, why are the banned players not coming back? I think part of the issue is the appeal process, which is really strict and discouraging. I remember when I was banned for almost 6 months for RDM, I had to submit so many appeals to get back on the server. I would say staff should start to be more forgiving in appeals, but i'm not sure if banned players care anymore. Most people have lives outside this RP universe and they don't care that much, especially when they must go through a wall (the current appeal process) to get back to RP. I did see some topics asking for "mass unban", ideally, this is a terrible idea, but taking into consideration the current state of the server, is it really that terrible? What could go wrong if staff allow everyone except cheaters to comeback? i mean if people break rules again, they will get banned again, but in return, the server will end up having more people on it, and should retain a good amount of players for the future. In the end, staff should know they are dealing with humans, not robots. People do make mistakes and its good there's a way to appeal a ban, but the way i see it is its really killing the server. So a mass unban excluding the cheaters might not sound like a horrible idea, and staff are always able to filter out the bad apples. I don't think the fivem migration will fix this issue. Yes Fivem is more popular, and there are big servers like prodigy and nopixel and echo that are dominating right now, but the players who chose to play on rage chose rage because it doesnt have the fivem feel/vibes, so when rage gets shut down, im not sure if people would prefer a fivem server that peaks at 80 or prodigy which peaks at 300 during the afternoon. If staff decides to keep things as is after moving to fivem, then i think things will get even worse. Im sorry for the yap-fest! if i said anything wrong, please let me know, this is a discussion so please discuss. 

[Earl Mud]

38 minutes ago, LordOfTheRing said:

Hey, I've joined the server when COVID was a thing, and I've been playing on and off up until 2023. I've recently came back, and honestly, I wasn't expecting this. I still remember the server being busy and having police/gangs and random people roaming around, but now it's even hard to find a soul on the map. I don't mean to be toxic, so please don't get me wrong, but this is literally what's been happening. I literally played for 2 days, and the first impression was "this is so boring". I do like the server, and I think the devs did a great job with the scripts, but why are so many people leaving?? It seems that a ton of people got banned over different types of rule breaks, which begs the question, why are the banned players not coming back? I think part of the issue is the appeal process, which is really strict and discouraging. I remember when I was banned for almost 6 months for RDM, I had to submit so many appeals to get back on the server. I would say staff should start to be more forgiving in appeals, but i'm not sure if banned players care anymore. Most people have lives outside this RP universe and they don't care that much, especially when they must go through a wall (the current appeal process) to get back to RP. I did see some topics asking for "mass unban", ideally, this is a terrible idea, but taking into consideration the current state of the server, is it really that terrible? What could go wrong if staff allow everyone except cheaters to comeback? i mean if people break rules again, they will get banned again, but in return, the server will end up having more people on it, and should retain a good amount of players for the future. In the end, staff should know they are dealing with humans, not robots. People do make mistakes and its good there's a way to appeal a ban, but the way i see it is its really killing the server. So a mass unban excluding the cheaters might not sound like a horrible idea, and staff are always able to filter out the bad apples. I don't think the fivem migration will fix this issue. Yes Fivem is more popular, and there are big servers like prodigy and nopixel and echo that are dominating right now, but the players who chose to play on rage chose rage because it doesnt have the fivem feel/vibes, so when rage gets shut down, im not sure if people would prefer a fivem server that peaks at 80 or prodigy which peaks at 300 during the afternoon. If staff decides to keep things as is after moving to fivem, then i think things will get even worse. Im sorry for the yap-fest! if i said anything wrong, please let me know, this is a discussion so please discuss. 

It def isn't cause the bans. Look at the other discussion threads, suggestions, etc. That's where you will find your answers.

[alexalex303]

ECRP never had a queue, you're thinking of other servers. Our server capacity was/is 1000 players and we never hit that. 

Server population stabilized around ~200 peak EU after COVID, anything lower than that is real player loss. Anything higher than 200 peak was COVID inflated numbers.

One of my biggest pet peeves with the server is how staff members keep spamming events; stuff like Out of Towners opening literally every night is inconvenient because when it's open, and there's only 100 players on the server, if you have 30 of them doing an animation waiting for the raffle there, the server feels dead. You literally won't find another person on the map outside of legals. 

I think we need to refocus on organic interactions rather than these heavily moderated and incentivized with raffle social gatherings. 

Edited Friday at 10:48 PM by alexalex303

[PufferBulletin]

I've quitted the server longer than a year ago due to family responsibility.

Situation has changed and now I would love to get back into the server. The issue the server feels dead and discouraging to join as a) there's not a lot to do with dwindling player count b) the community was never here to roleplay and most of people thinking knowing /me's and /do's is all the roleplay is about.

Don't get me wrong over time I have had many great interactions and met many great people but the player base was not there to create fun for each other apart selected group of people that you get along - shoot first, don't ask questions, and finish that person off as fast (as most players can't have fun if they lose) this completely halts the further roleplay which further fuels this cycle.

I'd love for the server to have a wipe with a new start and a new mechanics/changes (which won't happen apart the talks of FiveM i guess even if that is happening)  to have new experiences and to be able to say hi to people without being told to "fuck off mate / the fuck you said to me"

Sadly, there's not much to come back to when most of the things were already experienced, at the same time being pressured by adult responsibility & the player base is down bad and mostly tryhards are left in the server.



 

[padpilot]

Lack of development. Like genuinely the devs have done very little in the times ive been on/off the server (2019, 2024 and now in 2026). Its like time stood still on the ECRP dev team whilst the server makes money... absolute zero commitment to the playerbase with any sort of rpadmap.. hell, they dont even have a basic basic Trello or gitHub projects page for tracking suggestions/bugs reports. I genuinely think a couple of script kiddies got very very lucky back in the day and somehow they managed to wrangle together the right staff team which propped them up. 

 

Its either 1 of 2 options. Either the dev genuinely do not have the skills to update features and add stuff, of they have rhe skills but lack the willingness to commit to the community. It has to be one at least but may be both tbf. 

[Ritchie Stones]

On 7/18/2026 at 12:44 AM, alexalex303 said:

ECRP never had a queue, you're thinking of other servers. Our server capacity was/is 1000 players and we never hit that. 

Server population stabilized around ~200 peak EU after COVID, anything lower than that is real player loss. Anything higher than 200 peak was COVID inflated numbers.

One of my biggest pet peeves with the server is how staff members keep spamming events; stuff like Out of Towners opening literally every night is inconvenient because when it's open, and there's only 100 players on the server, if you have 30 of them doing an animation waiting for the raffle there, the server feels dead. You literally won't find another person on the map outside of legals. 

I think we need to refocus on organic interactions rather than these heavily moderated and incentivized with raffle social gatherings. 

damn thats a bitter pill to swallow 

[LordOfTheRing]

On 7/17/2026 at 11:51 PM, Earl Mud said:

It def isn't cause the bans. Look at the other discussion threads, suggestions, etc. That's where you will find your answers.

It seems like the things people are/were complaining about led to so many players not giving a shit and/or eventually getting banned, like a ripple effect. not an excuse i know..

On 7/18/2026 at 1:44 AM, alexalex303 said:

I think we need to refocus on organic interactions rather than these heavily moderated and incentivized with raffle social gatherings.

This is valid. There are no organic interactions on the server, one might argue it's because the server had been cops and robbers for a long period of time, criminals and cops are always trying to win, and RP quality be damned, while the others might say: I don't wanna play on a server without my friends who got banned over the most pathetic shit ever. The real question is, how can staff pull players back in after fumbling hard like this? Look at how the appeals work here, a dude gets banned for failing to report a ban evader, the description of the ban is quite dramatic, but that's not the point, the point is the dude didn't wanna snitch on his IRL friend who was just trying to play the game. I remember back in the day, several mass bans happened over the stupidest shit ever, like one dude ban evading which led to a whole ass gang getting banned.. staff at the time thought they could afford losing 50-70 players, because they had 350+ pop. And look where we are now... Other servers are way more forgiving and they treat their playerbase well, they listen, and they adapt, but the staff team here are still stuck on their old ways. I don't think fivem will fix anything, in fact it will make things harder. Staff can recover from this, but it all comes down to whether they are willing to give everyone a second chance to play on this server or not.

20 hours ago, padpilot said:

Lack of development

I'd argue this isn't true. We didn't have the scripts that we currently have 3 years ago, and we still had way more players on the server. I don't think the playerbase cares that much about the scripts, as much as they care about playing with their homies.

[padpilot]

10 hours ago, LordOfTheRing said:

I'd argue this isn't true. We didn't have the scripts that we currently have 3 years ago, and we still had way more players on the server. I don't think the playerbase cares that much about the scripts, as much as they care about playing with their homies.

I dunno man.. i see a hell of a lot of great suggestions from the community in the suggestions bit reagrding scripts- do I see Devs activly engaging with those posts, discussing them with the community and actively adding and maintaining a roadmap for transparency, i sure do not. 

Development could also mean things outside of the scripts as well, so stuff like cultural development, rules, devOps, roadmaps etc

I genuinely invite others to take a brief look at the suggestions from players, look at the care and effort that have been put into them and then look at the lack of engagement or even basic acknowledgement from the staff.

Ill even make it easy, search my profile and check out the fishing suggestion I made..I dont think any devs even reas it let alone commented on it. 

[LordOfTheRing]

13 hours ago, padpilot said:

look at the lack of engagement or even basic acknowledgement from the staff.

Agreed, the lack of engagement from staff and the devs is one of the reasons why this community had been slowly leaving and moving on to other projects or basically quitting GTA RP altogether. I think we're in this spot right now due to a series of bad practices and poor decision making from the higher ups. I really hope one day they wake up and do the right thing for the community. It is such a shame that all these people took time out of their day to post really good suggestions, and for what? To get ghosted by the community leaders. I will say this, a server full of scripts but without a community is wasted effort. Pulling everyone back in through a mass unban (excluding the cheaters) and then filtering out the bad apples over the following weeks or months will revive this server, but this seems unlikely to happen. 

[Eliza]

5 minutes ago, LordOfTheRing said:

I will say this, a server full of scripts but without a community is wasted effort. Pulling everyone back in through a mass unban (excluding the cheaters) and then filtering out the bad apples over the following weeks or months will revive this server, but this seems unlikely to happen. 

I don’t mean to sound like a Negative Nancy but a mass unban wouldn’t do as much as people think. The banned players who want to come back can appeal and will be let back in assuming they aren’t a cheater or ban evader.

The players who are banned and will never be let back in are players who have completely burned their bridges.

Edited 4 hours ago by Eliza

[LordOfTheRing]

1 hour ago, Eliza said:

The banned players who want to come back can appeal and will be let back in assuming they aren’t a cheater or ban evader.

The banned players who want to comeback don't want to post several appeals and write novels just to get back to this server when they have other options out there. The point that I made was the appeal process here is so discouraging and demotivating, especially when the server pop is like this. Why would anyone appeal a ban on a server with 50-90 player pop? When they can play on another server with consistent 250+ active players? This is a "help me help you" type of situation, not push me away with a "appeal again in 3-6 months" and expect me to keep coming back to you with more appeals.