Hello Strike. I hope you fixed your network problems (timeouts on irc ).
And back to our OT.
@SugarD:
1. Ahahaha, what a lie. Without the knowledge of GTA's scripting language, there would be no memory hacking and without knowing anything about SCM, there wouldn't be any cool mods around (not including MP, which are more based on memory addresses). Fortunately, SCM was hacked very quick and first memory addresses were documented shortly after the VC release. Steve M's limit adjuster for hacking many map settings was also released in 2003. Everything you pointed was available since late 2003. No one waited with that until the SA era began. So?
9. You are changing my words (again) just to write "you're wrong". Are you satisfied? I wrote about "not decreasing it", while you come with "player count have gone up and down, so no MP is stable for you". There is another difference. If SAMP loses today 100 players it's decreasing just mathematically, but this won't be visible in any way. While loosing 100 players in VCMP could be a disaster.
2. & 3. That just shows that you don't want to understand the truth. Sorry, but if a valuable source shows the huge difference in VC and SA gamers is not reliable for you, then any further discussion with you seems to be pointless, because you won't change your opinion at any price. Let's live our lives and see in the next 10 years how thing will happen.
There was recently a fan-mod MP beta test for Just Cause 2 (cool and cheap game). There was just one game server in America open, so every Asian or European got a high ping, but this was no hindrance. During two days, the player count was always above 1k when I was online and it went over 1,5k too. We didn't get so many players during R2 public beta tests, which took place for many days. This is another proof that an average player look more towards new games and that we need to offer the best we've got to current players or they may go away. Really.
1. You obviously have no clue as to what you are talking about. Most GTA MP mods out there today do not use SCM at all. In fact, GTA IV doesn't even have SCM code in it's files. Explain how IV:MP figured it out then.
Wrong. I said they didn't start major modding until the end of the VC era and the beginning of the SA one. Don't misquote me. Check your GTA release dates.
2. No, there is not a difference. What you said is exactly what you said. In your definition of stable, no GTA MP mods would be considered stable. If you meant overall users losing a specified amount, that is still not true. You are counting in percentages for things that are not comparable because their max server slot counts aren't comparable. That argument is not valid for this situation either.
3. Until you have a valid source of information that is not biased towards only those who use it, then you are still wrong. That is a fact.
If you had said "most X-Fire users prefer SA", that would be one thing, but claiming that "all players worldwide" prefer SA based on statistics from one, single service that not everyone uses is just a pure guess, which is not a fact. You also have not accounted for those that play both, which will heavily skew your results.
4. So you're going to compare something that is much more developed, is newer, and has advertised itself 1,000 times more than what you are comparing it to, and say that it's a fair comparison? You really have not put any effort into any of your false statistics.
There is a saying that you can't compare apples to oranges. You are trying to compare apples to kiwis.