Fancy Toothpaste

It's convenient. Money is near meaningless in GTAW after a certain point, so people would rather pay for the convenience of buying a brand-new car and modding it from scratch than having to roleplay with a second-hand seller. If they are going to engage with the second-hand market, they expect the savings and convenience of not having to modify the vehicle themselves to be worth the hassle of actually roleplaying. It would be nice to see modifications be the exception, not the norm. Creating a demand for used vehicles with especially attuned engines or turbochargers could help to increase the value of second-hand vehicles and enrich the roleplay of everyone in the car scene; unfortunately every modification in GTAW has a linear progression and is easily attainable, so if you’re going to tune your engine you might as well max it out. Since anyone can just drive to their local garage and get their engine supercharged in five minutes or less, it’s just expected that a vehicle is modified.

happy new year

What other use is there to having your cup-size in your /examine?

Instead of making me run my pockets, people are gonna try to steal my pockets 😔

This is not a 1-1 economy. Most people don't get paid $4,000 hour in real life, and yet that's minimal wage in the game universe. This would agitate the situation more than it would help it. The lack of end users isn't caused by the fact that a hit is $200 of in-game currency, which is very, very low when you take into consideration the $200,000 starting cash, $4,000 minimum wage and $800 hourly passive income. This is a complicated issue but I'll try to briefly sum up some of the key points: - Many civilian characters are tied to legal factions and would require corruption perms to partake in even a banal habit. - Many civilian characters are unwilling to RP the adverse effects of drug abuse, and as such, don't engage with the system whatsoever. - Many illegal characters don't partake in drug use; only purchase drugs that they can later deal down the line to the very few users who exist. - Even those characters that do engage with drug-RP often times fail to RP addiction accurately and outright ignore drugs when they're inconvenient. - Getting high is way more fun in real life than it is in a video-game. If you lowered prices and flooded supply, you'd just end up with a shit-more drugs that aren't going anywhere.

Big support +1

In a practical sense, realism concerns itself with what happens in reality while authenticity is concerned with the canon reacting reasonably to itself. These aren't mutually exclusive; something can be both realistic and authentic, but sometimes these concepts veer from one another. In my opinion, it's more important for characters in the world to react to their surroundings in an authentic way than to attempt to perfectly mirror what exists in reality.

It's not, but people don't regardless. Even with all the research in the world, it can be difficult for someone from a completely different culture to grasp what LA is really like. Yes, but that doesn't really render my point mute. It's still a substantial liberty taken that undermines both the setting's realism, and authenticity. At the moment we have a daily murder rate that surpasses all of Mexico. Others have done the math, but it's a very tired topic so I'm not going to get into it now and derail this thread further. According to the staff-mandated IC population portrayal, the number of players that exist at any given time is the IC population. The decision has been referenced in many previous staff decisions. I don't agree with it, but we are indeed a city of 800 people. While I don't think that we should abandon realism completely, trying to emulate perfect "realism" without taking the player experience into consideration is very silly. In the interest of not pushing this topic too far off its initial course, we'll agree to disagree.

People already cry "unrealistic", even as the server currently attempts to emulate reality. There was a discussion not long ago about unrealistic mask usage. While some players argued that the use of masks in public was unrealistic, other players argued that the constant use of masks is an aspect of LA hood culture. Whichever side of that argument is right, isn't really the point; the point is that we have a vastly diverse player base, with all kinds of different life experiences, who live continents away from the current setting, and are either unwilling or unable to come to a consensus on what LA is really like. The continuity team does its best to try and ensure consensus among the player base, but it's very obvious that Los Santos is vastly different than LA: Weed isn't legal, the political landscape is dominated by the Republican party, crime rates are beyond skewed, federal influence is almost entirely absent, and on and on the list can grow. The limitations of having a population of 800 players to represent a city nearly four million, as well as game/script limitations, means that realism can never truly be achieved. While the reality - something we can all relate to - is a great benchmark for how to present the server's canon, plenty of liberties have already been taken with regard to that presentation of Los Santos as Los Angeles. Trying to cling to what is "realistic" in regards to running a server that attempts to balance its player experience has largely proved to be a futile exercise.

This. The unfortunate truth is many people pick and choose the aspects of reality they want while ignoring the rest. Unfortunately, a server of 800 people who all roleplay together as a semi-autonomous city-state can never accurately emulate reality with all its nuance and complexity. Any attempts to follow reality to a T just end up half-baked. The real goal should be to create a world that is authentic; a world that makes sense within its own canon without necessarily being 1-to-1 with reality.

I never understood the mapping trope of throwing random vines and foliage on every surface. My theory is that some mappers add stupid amounts of greenery thinking it somehow classes their business up, but it just ends up doing the opposite; it starts to look like a shitty interior trying to cosplay as a more lavish setting. People need to start mapping more practical interiors that actually attempt to match the exterior's aestetic. There shouldn't be people getting whiplash from stepping inside your property. That's just bad mapping. Overly lavish interiors are an issue already covered under the property rules and regulations. It would be nice if PM made it a little clearer on how we're supposed to go about reporting these interiors to them.

This really hits the nail on the head for many issues we see throughout the server. It feels as though the current administration is more interested in maintaining the status quo than creating a dynamic roleplay environment.

I agree with this to an extent. The problem for me is, that this is already supposed to be enforced but clearly isn't. Above is a quote from rule 6) character rules. The intention of these quotes are very clear, but the issue remains widespread. I agree with stricter enforcement of LEO name changes too. LFM should be monitoring these cases of name change abuse more effectively, just as IFM should monitor cases of name change abuse done by members in illegal factions and groups more effectively. The problem is, they can't; the issue is far too widespread. A more automated system could mitigate the limitations of human error: Just think about how much easier it is for PM to handle property inactivity now that it's automated. You're right, they will be alerted by the UCP that there's a search warrant on their character if they attempt to name change and it doesn't work. The system still catches the flies regardless. People who use the name change function to "test" if they have a warrant on them either already have OOC suspicions that they have a warrant on their character, or have already been made OOCly aware by someone with MDC access. In either case, they're already trying to abuse the name change system to get out of consequences. Confirming the warrant makes no difference at this point. At least this way it's not as convenient, and they have to use in-character means to lay low from the law; hiding their stash or whatever else, instead of getting off scot-free thanks to an OOC mechanic that's supposed to improve roleplay, not hinder it. If the person doesn't have a warrant on them but is still suspicious that they do for whatever reason, and they try to name change on the UCP to "test" their theory, they basically just wasted a name change for nothing. If they want to return to their original name then guess what? They got to burn another name change. The costs of "testing" if you have a warrant on your character, will start to outweigh the benefits. I also offered two other potential solutions to the issue: 1. We could put a cooldown on name changing the same slot so that serial name change abusers can't just continue to skip from character to character while keeping the same stash, every time they shoot a cop on dashcam at a traffic stop. 2. We could put a timer on name changes so that they don't happen instantly, but instead occur after a certain amount of time has passed. Admittedly, this wouldn't be my favorite solution because I'm the type of person who really tries to jump into my concepts right away, but it would at the very least give LEO's time to enforce pending search warrants. At the end of the day though, I'm just putting meat on the table. My idea of how the system should work is not the final say. There are countless ways the system can be improved. What's important is recognizing that there is indeed an issue, and implementing changes that help to limit abuse and improve roleplay on the server. Improvements should always be strived for, otherwise, nothing will ever get better. Incremental improvement is a lot better than no improvement at all.

Name changes are often very bad for roleplay, but are good for the overall health of the server. I've heard all sorts of stories of people name changing after finding out through a friend with MDC access that there's a search warrant on their properties or an arrest warrant on their character. While I can't really confirm the validity of these stories on an individual basis, the fact I've heard them so prevalently is an indication that something may be wrong with the current system. Where there's smoke, there is usually fire. It's currently against the rules to name change in the midst of an active court case, nor should you be able to name change your way out of a search or arrest warrant. It really damages the continuty of roleplay and does indeed feel like a get-out-of-jail-free card. On the other hand, name changes help add a sense of continuity and progression to the player experience of the server as people make the transition from character to character. This is important for maintaining player retention, and for softening the potential blow of CKs. If people know they don't have to start back at square one, they'll feel a lot better about making a new character. Name changes also offer players a lot of flexibility and freedom in deciding the kind of characters they want to roleplay. If your concept doesn't work out for whatever reason, no sweat, you can move onto a new one without having to completely start over. It's also unavoidable to consider the monetary gain that name changes provide for the server. People pay for name changes through monthly donations or singular payments of 30WP. While the payments aren't massive by themselves, in large quantities they most certainly add up. I'd wager that name changes offer substantial value to the server and are at least partly responsible for accommodating many of the server's expenses. Personally, I'd like to see some kind of compromise that allows for the same player progression and flexibility while still catching those players that are potentially attempting to abuse the system. I honestly don't know how feasible it would be, but maybe when a player goes to name change their character, the UCP will scan the MDC for any active warrants. If it finds any, then the player is unable to name change until those warrants are concluded. Alternatively, there could be a cooldown added to the name changing the same character slot, or a timer that stops you from instantly name changing, allowing LEO's to carry out whatever roleplay they need to in that gap of time. There are all sorts of ways to help limit name change abuse while still keeping the system intact for those players who use it honestly.

I'm going to chime in since I have some experience in running a restaurant on GTAW: I was one of two people who ran the Up-n-Atom Diner in Blaine County starting in late March 2021 until late January 2022. During that time, I found running a restaurant to be very challenging but rewarding. The biggest challenge was finding other people motivated to roleplay waitresses and cook staff. Most of the time, my business partner and I could manage running the diner just the two of us, but depending on the time of day we opened, the business would end up getting swamped with waves of customers. We often wouldn't have enough staff on hand, so to adapt, my partner and I resorted to opening very late into the evening so we could manage orders in a timely manner while not sacrificing the quality of our roleplay, and our overall enjoyment. We managed to last as long as we did because we got very lucky: We found a tight-knit group of roleplayers who were interested in playing waitresses and cook staff. Unfortunately, said players have since lost interest in the server, and my business partner and I had to return to relying on ourselves to fill in the role of cook and wait staff respectively. I think the issue a lot of players run into when they try to run a restaurant is they aren't willing to do the work themselves; they just want to hire other people to do it for them. The unfortunate reality is that people and characters in GTAW are in constant flux. unless you get very, very lucky, you probably won't find players who are both motivated in fulfilling the niche roles required to run a restaurant, and who will remain active enough for the business to prosper. At the end of the day, the only person you can really rely on as an IC business owner is yourself. If you're truly invested in the concept, you have to be willing to fill these roles yourself. The reason bars are so prevalent on GTAW, is because they're incredibly easy to run. One person can open a bar by themselves, serve drinks, and rake in 40k without a hitch. To that end, if you're going to run a restaurant in character, you should figure out a concept you can run either by yourself or with one other person. Cafés, delis, bakeries, or very small mom-n'-pop style restaurants are all examples of businesses that can be run reliably with limited staff. Even then, you may have to simplify the menu and streamline the ordering process just to keep up with orders in a timely manner. While I would definitely like to see more fine-dining restaurants open up, the only time I could recommend running one is if you already have a group of dedicated roleplayers who you know can reliably run the business with you, and fill the roles of chefs, bartenders, and waitstaff. Otherwise, you're going to spend more time trying to hire staff than actually opening your resturant.

Part of the issue lies in that GTAW only has a state criminal court system with no juvenile court system or juvenile detention facilities; therebye all offenders regardless of age are charged as adults and subject to the same punishments. The system GTAW currently has isn't strictly realistic but is not terribly far off from reality in the United States, especially when we're talking about (M) characters committing violent criminal offenses. With the spike of violent crimes committed by juveniles in the 1980s and 1990s, prosecuters and judges started moving more and more violent juvenile offenders out of juvenile court and into criminal court, especially if said offenders had gang affiliations. In 1994, for example, approximately 13,000 juveniles were charged as adults in the United States with the majority of their charges being for violent felonies. California is known for being extremely hard on juvenile offenders, in part due to the amount of youth gangs within the state. They have a "once an adult, always an adult" system which designates juveniles as adults if they've ever had charges filled in criminal court before; regardless of if said charges stuck. The judicial system on GTAW can't be strictly one to one for a number of complicated reasons, and therebye tries it's best to capture the spirit of the US justice system. Characters have to sacrifice their sixth amendment right to be judged by a jury of their peers because it's not pheasable to organize from a game play perspective. Following the same logic, without juvenile courts or juvenile facilities it's just more pheasable to try juvenile offenders as adults.

1) Common Courtesy While out of character it is expected of you to remain respectful and calm towards others. Every player should feel welcome in the community no matter what their background is. Any form of OOC discrimination is forbidden and can result in a community ban if it is severe enough. Limiting someone's IC progression because of an OOC inability to use voice-chat is the definition of discrimination. This is a heavy, text-based roleplay server. That's what people come here to do; text-based roleplay. We're not supposed to be mixing IC and OOC on this server and you're advocating for exactly that. The use of teamspeak for a text-based server should be re-examined. While I understand its necessity under specific circumstances such as pursuits, the support for this very suggestion shows that other alternatives should also be explored as to accommodate those with disabilities, instead of limiting them. That would be the decent thing to do. This suggestion gets a +1 from me.

I really wish people would stop using the "It's just a game" defense for poor roleplay and portrayal: They're 100% right. GTAW is just a game, but the game is heavy roleplay. That's what we all sign up for. That's the standard we should be holding ourselves to. Fun and heavy roleplay are not mutually exclusive. If you don't find heavy roleplay fun, than spend your time doing something that you do enjoy, not toning down the roleplay for everyone else. If you're not here to portray, develop and explore an interesting and well-rounded character, than I don't think this should be the server for you.

Let me start this out by saying I'm not a big fan of the current crime-zone rules because to me, they're an OOC band-aid solution for a multitude of other problems we see on this server. The crime-zone system isn't the system I would've choosen to tackle unrealistic criminal activity on this server. OOC crime zone restrictions are "anti-roleplay". I believe in freedom of roleplay, with freedom of consequence. If you want to play a methed-out sociopath with a hairpin trigger, I'm on board with your concept, but there needs to be as many ways for your character to be caught and punished for their actions, as there are in real life. If you want to be an ultra-violent gang, I'm alright with that, but you better be ready for an impending gang-injunction that can meaningfully impact your roleplay. We need to have more IC repercussions for criminal activity, not more OOC restrictions. The current crime-zones system is functional, but just barely. The fact that there's been a massive exception made for scripted factions is something I'm against. This is the kind of decision that is meant to please everyone while pleasing no one. I know that the intention of these crime zones was to try and target all the PUBG-shitters who usually aren't part of scripted factions, and for that purpose and that purpose alone, these crime zones are semi-functional, but I still believe that standards should be equally applied to everyone, regardless of if you're part of a faction or not. Rules that have all sorts of convolutions and exceptions are barely functional as rules at all. I take issue with the wording of the exception: The idea that higher standards are a "burden" is laughable. High standards in roleplay shouldn't be considered a "burden" so much as an expectation. If anything, we should be holding scripted factions to a higher standard of roleplay because they're the primary providers of illegal RP on the server. They're the shining star; the example of what illegal roleplay is supposed to look like on this server. If you're going to have OOC restrictions, apply them equally. Commit to those restrictions fully or don't commit at all. With all that said, however, I still don't agree with the system as a whole. I think it's made some difference in limiting the unrealistic crime committed by a specific demographic of players, but only that.

I used to run a strip club on one of my characters a few years back. it definitely occurred to me that some of the characters who were hired seemed to only exist for the OOC sexual gratification of the person behind the screen. Not all, but it was just painfully obvious that a few of the people who worked there weren't typing with both hands, if you know what I mean. Roleplay is and always has been about freedom. Freedom to play the part of someone who you aren't, and do things you maybe wouldn't do. Whenever there is the ability and freedom to create a character, people will utilize that freedom inappropriately; whether that means making a character who only exists for ERP, making a character just for robberies and drug deals, or creating a cop character who only exists to be on duty. These are all examples of one-note characters who should be discouraged, though I can't help but feel like one of these examples is more sternly regulated than the others. To answer the question presented by this thread, yes. Characters that exclusively exist for ERP are already regulated explicitly under rule-19, as they should be. I just wish we spent as much time discussing and enforcing standards set in rule-19 as we did enforce standards for other one-dimensional characters.

While I agree first and foremost that it's an issue of portrayal, much of the poor escalation on this server is also caused by a sheer lack of in-character consequences for extreme acts of violence. None of the real life risks associated with extreme acts of violence are present in GTAW so it's no wonder why people fail to roleplay realistic escalation. It's very unlikely that you will be caught for murder, so it becomes the easy, go-to solution for many people. Block-wiping used to be a huge problem in the gang scene specifically because it was so easy and carried little chance of getting caught. In real life, the dude who murders the subway worker for putting too much mayo on his sandwich gets arrested and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility for parole. If that exchange were to happen in GTAW, he'd probably never be investigated. This is the crux of the issue.

Between 2014-2017 roughly 700 cooperating government witnesses in the US were threatened or assaulted, with 61 murdered. Obviously, crime rates on the server are never going to be one-to-one. Still, an average of 20.3 "snitches" murdered yearly in a population of 329.5 million people is surprisingly low. There are also three basic classifications of cooperating government witnesses: Civilian witnesses who report crimes that they have no personal involvement in, a victim of a crime, and a member of organized crime informing on their organization. These three basic types of "snitches" all have very different motivating factors for their cooperation. There are also paid informants (the FBI has admitted to dishing out $548 million to their informants in recent years) but since paid informants basically don't exist on this server, we'll just consider the three previously mentioned. Since 1971, there have been 19,000 families registered for federal witness protection in the US. This statistic excludes states like New York, California, Illinois, Texas, and Connecticut which all have their own programs. If you're in witness protection you've probably got good reasons to fear for you and your family's safety, and yet how many of these "snitches" are murdered? Very, very few. I think everyone can agree that the "snitches" who are most likely to face retribution are the former members of organized crime informing on their organization. A good example is Whitey Bulger, who, in 2018, was murdered in prison for his years as an FBI informant. Even still, high-profile "snitches" are often left alone. Joseph Massino testified twice for the federal government against an acting New York mob boss in 2011 and remains alive over a decade later. Daniel Hernandez, AKA Tekashi69 testified against Nine Trey Gangster Blood members in 2019 and has been on the street since 2020. This should go without saying but, murdering people in real life is risky. You could go to prison for the rest of your life. In alot of cases, there's more reason not to take revenge upon a "snitch" than there is to take revenge. Murder of any kind brings all sorts of heat to criminal organizations. When an organization has a lot of open murder cases stacked on them, they tend to weigh that organization down. Open murders contribute to warrents, RICO cases, gang injunctions and anything in between. Being the subject of an open murder investigation is really bad for criminal organizations. In GTAW however, the risk of you getting caught for murder is pretty damn slim. Murdering informants brings little to no heat whatsoever, so there's basically no IC reason not to kill the "snitch". No one's going to investigate the 60th murder that day. Not to mention, if you do get caught you can be back out on the street in about 15 days so it's not really the end of the world. All of the factors that would deter someone from icing a "snitch" in real life don't exist in GTAW, so we see people acting like it's 1980s Columbia.

Creating a roleplay environment in which minor characters are allowed will inevitably attract the kind of players interested in roleplaying as or with minors. Some of these players have perfectly innocent intentions; using their minor character to further their development and some of them use their status as a minor character for... Other things. This has, unfortunately happened previously and will inevitably occure again. As easy as it is to, "just report those abusing their status as a minor character", I still don't like the idea of this community accidentally enabling certain disgusting individuals. I'd rather we just disallow minor characters and avoid the issue - and the players who cause the issue - entirely.

I once attempted to change my business' script name to match up with the exterior signage. An admin responded to me after about 20-30 minutes and told me they needed to check to see if I was allowed to have that business name or not (even though it was the name on the signs outside). I waited two hours. They never got back to me. After that, I decided to report again and got it changed in under 5 minutes without any hassle. This anecdote is an imperfect representation of the system. Still, I can't help but feel as though sometimes the administration is plastered so thick with red tape and bureaucracy that things take far longer, and are far more complicated than is reasonable. It's hard to say, because the administration isn't particularly transparent with the community, in regards to how they go about their duties. It might be good to reexamine existing policies when handling /reports and figure out which ones can be easily simplified and streamlined.

Looks unique. Best of luck with it.