Current State of Extorting Businesses

[Torlo]

19 minutes ago, shiroq said:

Have you not read the thread at all? Maybe we should pool our resources and translate this to any possible language on the planet. IF you see unrealistic portrayal REPORT IT to ILLEGAL FM. If you want some rpg restrictions because you are getting extorted and you are unable to get out of it by IC means then maybe this server is not for you? Because it's a roleplay server this isn't an RPG server where you are shielded and protected by 200 rules that dictatate what people can and can't do. There is a million of ways for you to deal with such situation IC but it's rather clear to me and most people that you and a lot of other people don't care about it and all you want is "please stop extortion, i don't want to lose my e-dollars"

You have every possibility to deal with this IC and if the roleplay is bad, unrealistic OOC as well. This is a roleplay server, yes there is bad factions there is horrible portrayal but you rather get yourself protected by some stupid ooc rules instead of helping the server bloom and reporting these "horrible" rpers you are talking about?

This isn't about losing my "e-dollars" I couldn't care less if the government made me pay 5k a week, I can afford it and have no issues. My issue is the threat of CK to my character because he went to the police as he realistically would, which the criminal is not threatened in any way and can simply continue without any issues.

[Late]

If I get CK'd because I refuse to give someone 4 dollars from my 40 dollar kebabs then that's the day I quit the server. 

Maybe Nut Buster Kebab is too popular of a business to be on the extortion radar. I feel like all of my customers would whip out their PF's and defend it any how. 

Edited June 30, 2020 by Late

[Ink]

24 minutes ago, Torlo said:

This isn't about losing my "e-dollars" I couldn't care less if the government made me pay 5k a week, I can afford it and have no issues. My issue is the threat of CK to my character because he went to the police as he realistically would, which the criminal is not threatened in any way and can simply continue without any issues.

 

This is exactly it. Almost no one in this thread is complaining about losing the money. In fact, multiple of us have outright said we'd be happy to share the {incredibly meager} profits of running a business with a criminal faction if they had an engaging and interesting roleplay which was fun. If the extortion racket meant that my business would be a frequent hangout spot for the faction extorting me and they brought in roleplay, then that's fantastic. If there was an actual element of protection involved in the racket rather than just a significantly heightened risk of having your business sabotaged, smashed up, openings ruined, and your character beaten up, mutilated, kidnapped, or murdered, then it would be more fun to roleplay.

And more than that, if criminals exercised their creativity enough to actually find an interesting way to roleplay making money off of legal businesses, I'd much more happily roleplay that. 

 

But right now? Out of the 20k we make out of businesses, it's a far better vehicle for creating RP on the server if that money is spent paying players who are willing to RP the employees that make this server an awesome place to play rather than pay Mikhail Skyvodka just so he doesn't RP smashing in your windows, kidnapping you on your walk home, and murdering you for having the "9" and "1" keys still attached to your phone.

Edited June 30, 2020 by Ink

[my_g]

15 minutes ago, Ink said:

 

This is exactly it. Almost no one in this thread is complaining about losing the money. In fact, multiple of us have outright said we'd be happy to share the {incredibly meager} profits of running a business with a criminal faction if they had an engaging and interesting roleplay which was fun. If the extortion racket meant that my business would be a frequent hangout spot for the faction extorting me and they brought in roleplay, then that's fantastic. If there was an actual element of protection involved in the racket rather than just a significantly heightened risk of having your business sabotaged, smashed up, openings ruined, and your character beaten up, mutilated, kidnapped, or murdered, then it would be more fun to roleplay.

And more than that, if criminals exercised their creativity enough to actually find an interesting way to roleplay making money off of legal businesses, I'd much more happily roleplay that. 

 

But right now? Out of the 20k we make out of businesses, it's a far better vehicle for creating RP on the server if that money is spent paying players who are willing to RP the employees that make this server an awesome place to play rather than pay Mikhail Skyvodka just so he doesn't RP smashing in your windows, kidnapping you on your walk home, and murdering you for having the "9" and "1" keys still attached to your phone.

How are you able to accurately speak on the state of all current extortion operations when you haven't even been extorted yourself?

[shiroq]

1 minute ago, my_g said:

How are you able to accurately speak on the state of all current extortion operations when you haven't even been extorted yourself?

You don't get it, one bad player/faction means we need to turn the server into RPG instead of reporting those poor roleplayers and make sure they learn or are removed from the server if they are not fit to be here.

Edited June 30, 2020 by shiroq

[Ink]

13 minutes ago, my_g said:

How are you able to accurately speak on the state of all current extortion operations when you haven't even been extorted yourself?

 

I speak about what I've seen. Because even though I've not been extorted, I've been standing in businesses when people came in to extort multiple times. One time I was even asked, as a plain old customer, OOCly by the people extorting to put them in touch with the owner of the business!? I've also heard plenty of examples of awful extortion roleplay. In addition, I have 15 years of roleplaying the GTA community, and I've seen it all before a hundred times. These are the same boring cliches that have plagued communities like this for over a decade.

 

I speak not of "all" extortion roleplay but of the vast majority. I know that in every puddle of roleplayers there will be some good even amidst the bad. Coming in here and screaming "#notallextortion!" is a waste of breath because you guys who do "good extortion" aren't the problem. That being said, virtually all extortion that is being roleplayed on this server is unrealistic in a depiction of 2020 Los Angeles. Period. Full stop.

 

Any excuses made for this RP continue to ignore that it is unrealistic and an example of laziness and a lack of creativity.

 

10 minutes ago, shiroq said:

You don't get it, one bad player/faction means we need to turn the server into RPG instead of reporting those poor roleplayers and make sure they learn or are removed from the server if they are not fit to be here.

 

Nice strawman argument. It's not like we have an illegal faction management team that's supposed to hold the RP quality and realism of criminal factions to a higher standard. It seems like most people here are asking for criminal factions to be more mindful of IC consequences in their roleplay even if OOCly there are flaws in the nature of our game world that make it hard to exert those consequences. Alternatively, we're asking for the server's OOC rules to be adapted to make it so that criminals face higher sentences for being caught if they continue to RP a lack of fear for law enforcement to better represent the risk associated with getting caught in a server where getting caught is difficult and requires insane amounts of OOC time and effort from the police officers (need I mention again 30-page investigation reports for a roleplay that took 20 minutes?)

[shiroq]

2 minutes ago, Ink said:

One time I was even asked, as a plain old customer, OOCly by the people extorting to put them in touch with the owner of the business!?

So you witnessed a rule break, did you report it?

 

3 minutes ago, Ink said:

It's not like we have an illegal faction management team that's supposed to hold the RP quality and realism of criminal factions to a higher standard.

Alright so again, have you made reports? Illegal FM does not have the resources to monitor half of the server. Without reports they cannot simply know what goes on in the server,which are done to the FM team in private so that you don't need to go public about it if those are fears or some players. The lack of will to report bad roleplay on this server is laughable, everyone complains about this and that but are actually incapable of putting any effort to make the server a better place?

Admins do not get paid, this is not their job they have lives too. Reports are the to make their jobs easier. There has been plenty factions and plenty of bad roleplayers that have been shut down by FM for poor portayal when they actually got reported. Without that you simply cannot expect anything to change. And if you are going to shoot me "players are not supposed to police other players" then I can't take you seriously in any of your arguments. Because this is exactly what players in such community are supposed to do. If you see something bad, you are supposed to speak up on it. If you expect change without putting any effort into helping that change come about then this is a waste of everyone's time.

And no having a discussion on the forums without any evidence/proof is not the right way to do it. Gather screenshots/logs and report it if you want change.

[my_g]

16 minutes ago, Ink said:

I speak about what I've seen. Because even though I've not been extorted, I've been standing in businesses when people came in to extort multiple times. One time I was even asked, as a plain old customer, OOCly by the people extorting to put them in touch with the owner of the business!? I've also heard plenty of examples of awful extortion roleplay. In addition, I have 15 years of roleplaying the GTA community, and I've seen it all before a hundred times. These are the same boring cliches that have plagued communities like this for over a decade.

 

I speak not of "all" extortion roleplay but of the vast majority. I know that in every puddle of roleplayers there will be some good even amidst the bad. Coming in here and screaming "#notallextortion!" is a waste of breath because you guys who do "good extortion" aren't the problem. That being said, virtually all extortion that is being roleplayed on this server is unrealistic in a depiction of 2020 Los Angeles. Period. Full stop.

 

Any excuses made for this RP continue to ignore that it is unrealistic and an example of laziness and a lack of creativity.

 

So you've seen maybe a few cases of extortion on the server and have heard accounts from people who are probably coming from a biased perspective on it themselves. I don't see how this means you can accurately claim that "virtually all extortion" on the server is bad, illegal fm puts a lot of work into making sure that illegal factions roleplay is of a high quality and they're doing a pretty good job of it as well as the factions themselves obviously. And just because you find the roleplay to be personally boring and lacking creativity doesn't mean anything, are you so certain that your own roleplay is of some superior quality? I also don't see how you can accurately claim that it's unrealistic, what qualifies you as an expert of real life criminal activities?

 

edit: Ontop of all this you only joined the server around 10 days ago, yet you feel like you know everything about the criminal rp that takes place on it?

 

Edited June 30, 2020 by my_g

[Ink]

3 minutes ago, my_g said:

So you've seen maybe a few cases of extortion on the server and have heard accounts from people who are probably coming from a biased perspective on it themselves.

 

As opposed to the biased perspective of the criminal roleplayers defending their cash cow?

3 minutes ago, my_g said:

I don't see how this means you can accurately claim that "virtually all extortion" on the server is bad,

 

I have enough of a statistically relevant sample size that I can fairly make the claim. I have yet to see a single legal roleplayer pop into this thread (or anywhere) to say "yeah I got extorted on GTA:W and the RP was super fun and interesting, I applaud everything about the RP, really thankful for these dudes for taking the time with me it was awesome." Yet I see a lot of criminal RPers whose characters participate in extortion popping in here and claiming it's great roleplay.

 

3 minutes ago, my_g said:

illegal fm puts a lot of work into making sure that illegal factions roleplay is of a high quality and they're doing a pretty good job of it as well as the factions themselves obviously.

 

I am not qualified to respond to this point. I've heard people generally express a sentiment that IFM can do more. Which is fair, it's a volunteer position as someone else stated, and as someone who has run IFM on multiple other servers I know it's a very challenging position. But what I'm seeing a lot of in this thread is that although the criminal roleplayers like to parrot "It's an IC problem, keep it IC!" almost everyone acknowledges the importance of OOC moderation of poor portrayal. And a lot of this extortion that's happening is absolutely poor portrayal which leans on the difficulty of investigative RP happening in our heavy RP server.

 

3 minutes ago, my_g said:

And just because you find the roleplay to be personally boring and lacking creativity doesn't mean anything, are you so certain that your own roleplay is of some superior quality?

 

I know my roleplay creates RP for other people, that people are excited to roleplay with me, and that I have never had anyone express any OOC frustration at me because of the effects of my roleplay on them. I would prefer to let others speak of my roleplay quality if at all.

 

3 minutes ago, my_g said:

I also don't see how you can accurately claim that it's unrealistic, what qualifies you as an expert of real life criminal activities?

 

Approximately two decades of study in the subject, a decent amount of real life experience being around American crime, having lived with organized criminals, having owned businesses, having lived in Los Angeles, New York, and multiple other major American cities, and my real life profession has me in tune with a lot of the gossip of my city both clean and dirty. I don't purport to be an expert on the level of a real world professional in criminal investigation, but I believe that I have more than enough qualification to speak with a degree of confidence on matters of real world criminality in major American metropolises. I would be willing to wager that within this community there are not many who may credibly claim to have substantially more knowledge on the subject without also claiming that they themselves work as police investigators or are personally involved in an American organized criminal organization. Every now and then I'll see people claim that they have connections, but they live in a country like Serbia, or Bulgaria, and the criminal environment of those countries are not similar to the ones portrayed by our server.

 

3 minutes ago, my_g said:

 

edit: Ontop of all this you only joined the server around 10 days ago, yet you feel like you know everything about the criminal rp that takes place on it?

 

You realize that that's just when I joined the forum, right?

[.George]

5 minutes ago, Ink said:

I have enough of a statistically relevant sample size that I can fairly make the claim. I have yet to see a single legal roleplayer pop into this thread (or anywhere) to say "yeah I got extorted on GTA:W and the RP was super fun and interesting, I applaud everything about the RP, really thankful for these dudes for taking the time with me it was awesome." Yet I see a lot of criminal RPers whose characters participate in extortion popping in here and claiming it's great roleplay.

It is merely loud minority that is always coming forward. People that have positive/neutral experiences with such roleplay don't feel the need to go and make threads like STATE OF EXTORTION IS GREAT etc...

Usually whenever something is brought up, it is brought up in negative light simply because that's only reason people wish to bring it up.