What Makes a Server Good to You?

1. Good staff team.
2. Customization (Not gmodstore or workshop addons)
3. Proper selection of the said gmodstore or workshop addons
4. No filtering of what is said on voice, these kids need a reality check sometimes =P

Good weapon pack, no minges, a lot of jobs, HUD, F4, SCOREBOARD, map, good optimization.

TL:DR - Strict but fair and understanding staff. Custom content is a plus, not necessity. How you treat your community, how they treat each other, and how they treat the server is connected to how many people join and stay.

!!!!!!!!!!

For whatever reason, being unoriginal and using paid addons as a base for your server brings in quite a lot of players. I'm a big fan of custom content. It's quite scarce. And not claiming that paid addons are bad. Those developers are making some money doing what they do best. And to be fair, they are pretty great addons that I wouldn't mind paying for. But majority DarkRP servers that use these addons have a person in the slot of developer who has very little Lua experience and has the title to just have the title. They setup these addons as the "server developer", which just in my opinion they don't really deserve the title.

Mini-rant over. Apologies if I went a bit off-topic there.

Content is a big piece of the server. But ultimately to me, it comes down to the staff, the full community, and your targeted audience (which you can tell through the type of content)

I'm all for a little fun, but staff need to be strict sometimes but fair and understanding. Rules need to be in place specifically for staff. I'm not a fan of trialmod, trialadmin, and that bs.
And nobody is a fan of paid, or 'donator', ranks (in terms of admin and all that). I'd say don't use applications and play-time alone for choosing those who"police" your community. Get to know your own community,not as a wholebut each individualplayer. Learn who you can trust with "power". Keep away from over-regulating how admins solve problems: give them a few restrictions on how to solve problems rather than giving them one clear, strict way.

If you're able to get a loving community up and going in the end, congratulations, non-sarcastically you have honestly accomplished something big. Just like this site, get people involved in the further development of your server, or server(s) if you plan on making a big community.

A good server has an owner that isnt money hungry and actually cares about his players.

Well managed, good staff, active playerbase, nice people, decent amount of jobs, and good addons.

Funny, no RDM. Active staff and people can RP instad of people just kill other....

I think the most important is the community, then you have the content.
i particularly like some good progression system
But in general, a lot of addons that provide an enjoyable experience is also good