PK / Value of Life Rule Discussion

[jcat]

On 7/15/2019 at 5:19 AM, Coni said:

What you essentially punish is people who care about character development and a real story progression.

 

^This.

[jcat]

GTAW's playerbase has different interests.

 

Character Development/Progression

Action

Trolling

Getting Money

 

The Action and Trolling interests, and the criminal Getting Money interests frequently force unwanted rp on others.  The current PK system is a critical safeguard to make sure the Character Development interests aren't destroyed by the Action/Trolling/Criminal Money interests.  To force a CK on a character who has a legitimate reason to fight back during a robbery (a veteran, a tough guy, a guy protecting his wife, somebody who's been robbed a zillion times and is sick of it, etc.) would only destroy all the weeks of effort put into that character's development. 

 

It would send the message loud and clear that Character Development just isn't worth it.  That's the kiss of death for a heavy RP server.

 

Right now, the players who value their characters the least win. 

 

PKs aren't unreasonable because 75% of people who get shot survive.  We're dealing with the limitations of a game engine designed for a violent shoot-em-up game.  It can't deal with things like a person lying shot and unconscious for hours.  We as players have to do that.

 

If it were up to me, I would keep our current CK system (consent or admin-authorized application).  A lot of our factions on GTAW have a good thing going when they require CK consent on joining the faction.  For PKs, I would say that they are all hospitalizations with a server rule that the people involved can't bother each other for a month.  That let's the situation cool, and nobody loses any character development.

 

To get people to stop throwing their characters' lives away, the server could implement a rule that each time a character gets PK'd, the cost of hospitalization goes up.  For the first 5 times it's free, the next time it costs 10,000, the time after than it costs 20,000, the time after that it costs 30,000, and so on. Let the debt run into the negative, and make half the money in the character's bank account go to pay down the debt every week.  This would cause criminal characters to bother more people, but it wouldn't be worth it in the end as the debts mounted.

 

There will always be people who don't care and make disposable violent characters.  If Greg Jones gets CK'd they'll just make Al Jones, Bob Jones, Charlie Jones, and so on who are all pretty much the same.  I think we should focus on protecting the rest of us from these characters instead of trying to get these characters to stop doing what they came on here to do.

 

Some ideas:

 

Keep CKs the way they are, consent or admin-approved authorization.

 

Consider PKs to be hospitalizations, with ooc rules to keep revenge attacks to a minimum.  This protects developed characters from the disposable characters.  Be lenient with restoring people to life for accidental PKs, like falling, stepping in a beach fire and burning to death, getting hit by a desync'd car, and so on.    Since PKs wouldn't be 'deaths', all consequences would still follow the character, like getting arrested in his hospital bed, and getting a medical care debt.  Be lenient with requiring people to rp long term injuries, recoveries, and so on.  It sucks to have unwanted rp forced on a character, then get shot even though you rp'd fear and did everything right, and then get stuck rping those injuries for a long time.  I'm all about realism, but I won't do it anymore because I'm not going to allow disposable violent characters or straight up troll characters to have much effect on my rp.

 

Medical billing as I described above.  Let generally non-violent characters who were victimized request debt relief.

 

Other ideas:

 

Make gang areas a free fire zone.  This is a GTA rp server, and gangs and crime are a big part of it.  The thugs need to thug, the gangsters need to gangster, and all the rest of it.  So, make traditional gang neighborhoods free fire zones.  Strawberry, Davis, El Burro Heights, for example.  That way characters can do drive-bys, gang brawls, killings over insults, beatdowns, and all the violent mean streets rp.  Normal characters might want to leave, or accept the challenge of living in a gang-infested criminal neighborhood.  Deaths in the free fire zone would be PKs except for admin approved CKs.  Also, a free fire zone death could have a 2 or 3 day character ban to represent the character being in the hospital, and to prevent a constant stream of reinforcements to a gang battle.  This would allow Action players and trolls to really get their fill.  Strawberry gangs could attack El Burro Heights, Davis could attack Strawberry, the Police could roll in force and really blow the shit out of the place, and fun would be had by all.

 

Think about the rp possibilities of this.  Police would have to escort FD to save the lives of wounded civilians.  FD would have to make moral choices about who to treat, a civilian or a gang member who is on the verge of death.  How will the police allocate scarce manpower to deal with a gang war and still protect the rest of the city?  Reporters from Weazel news could venture into these dangerous neighborhoods to get the 'real stories from the STREETS'.  Gang members could rob the reporters while yelling 'fuck Weazel News!'  Gangs could plan and execute drive-bys, gang wars, and revenge attacks.  There could be an admin supervision requirement for any large scale attack.  Treat large scale gangfights like events or something.  It wouldn't be too hard to devise some kind of scoring system to determine which gang controls a certain block, and then gets access to the drug trade in that area, like Gang 1 and Gang 2 are going to fight for the month of January, and the gang with the most kills and least deaths wins.  That would give the Money players something to strive for.  If all the members of a gang get killed, then that gang can't launch a gang event for a month.  4 or 5 PKs in a gang event could mean an automatic CK.  Funnel the Action, Trolling, and Criminal Money interests into these events and areas.  The possibilities are endless. 

 

A lot of players just want Action.  This could be their outlet.  For those of us who want to rp, we could stay away from those neighborhoods.  If Action players and trolls bring it outside of the those neighborhoods, then the admins can apply the full force of the normal rules to them.  I know all the objections to an idea like this (deathmatch server, etc.), but there needs to be a solution.  Everybody should feel free to come up with one, and hopefully we'll find one that works.

 

 

Another idea:

 

Make a formal system for resolving violence without using the game engine.  An issue for me is that there are a lot of violent characters that my character has to deal with, usually not by choice.  Since these characters are probably going to use the game engine to resolve any violence, that means I have to strike first, strike fast, and strike to kill, because they sure will.  If I don't, I get to play the victim rp all over again, and it's boring me to pieces.  It's the evil opposite of rp.  There's no build up, there's no dialogue, there's no long fight scene, only a /me and a LMB clickfest.  I know there's a die rolling functionality that people use.  If there's a consistent system that people are using, please post a link.