Things the community can do to grow bigger?

[Guest]

No factions in the history of this server have been micro managed voluntarily on our behalf. When we have to step in to ensure that a faction is following the continuity of a heavy roleplay server, that’s when we start to consider pulling the plug on that faction because there’s a huge difference between micro management and giving people a friendly nudge into the right lane of travel and not the lane of destruction.

 

Almost every faction that has formed a group to leave the server in an attempt to damage the status of GTA World have been the same factions that we receive reports about regularly and if it’s upsetting the balance of realistic roleplay to borderline GTA Singleplayer RPG then again, we step in to make sure that doesn’t happen.

 

Faction Management treats every faction the same, nobody has special royalties or less criticism. There is a reason our team is here and part of our existence is because of things like a Council that was formed between a Sureno gang, an Italian-American rip-off of Godfather and a Skyrim-like Mafia ran by a female. The reason we exist is to prevent that ever happening again or something along those lines happening.

 

In reference to those blaming FM or the staff team for them leaving... all I can say is: don’t break the rules and you won’t be on a list to be watched and managed by us. You break the rules that are set out, you are liable for the consequences to follow. 

 

To conclude my response to you guys anyhow, FM don’t voluntarily close a faction without a reason to do so and we certainly don’t block opportunities for people as long as they follow the continuity of a heavy roleplay server. People telling me that a female can run a cartel (which don’t exist in America because this isn’t Medellín) and then proceed to send us a link to Griselda Blanco will obviously be criticised because that would never happen on the West Coast of America.

 

People are expected to research their faction and character concepts to ensure that they’re being realistic and not a character from The Elder Scrolls Online. The majority of players, we’ve never had an issue with, but some choose to kick and scream and complain because they’re not being indulged to run wild and break as many rules as possible without any consequences to follow.

 

You are all appreciated as members of this community. What we don’t appreciate is people that have a clear disregard for the direction of the roleplay this server is headed to and the rules that are clearly set out. If you do your research beyond Wikipedia and Gangland for a faction concept, you’ll avoid a headache for us and a headache for yourself!

 

We don’t do any of this to micro manage or suppress your right to roleplay, we do it to protect the values that we follow which is the value of heavy roleplay. If anything, we’re looking out for the quality of the server so you all can enjoy a server that’s fluent in decent roleplay and not subpar characters / factions.

[juicykiwi]

11 hours ago, Maca said:

That's wildly incorrect. Those 4 factions that you have just named left the community on bad terms and decided to violate multiple rules (including deathmatching and asset transferring / bug abuse) because they didn't get their own way. Them type of players are not welcome back and players like them are encouraged to either change or follow them out.

 

We once adopted a mentality of "ah please don't do that again" and it didn't work. Players just walked all over the staff team and the community in general with no regard for how the rest of the community felt about their actions. So now, naturally, we're tougher on the players if they violate rules. 

 

EDIT: Without intending to be rude or confrontational, as an illegal roleplayer I also think the excuse of "there's nothing to do" for illegal factions to be incorrect and slightly lazy. There's plenty to do, people are just too lazy to research.

I think it's very unfair to tar us all with the same brush as I never agreed with the way factions like the Italians left the server as it struck me as childish. Our faction the Gravedwellers closed their thread down of their own accord and I believe there are still of us few roleplaying unofficially. If there are one or two members you don't like in the Gravedwellers then I can understand but it's discriminatory and unfair to say that as a faction we've gone around breaking rules because it's simply not true.

[Guest]

I believe you’re taking my paragraph out of context which I’ll clarify on - the part where I’ve put “them types of players are not welcome here” does not mean it applies to you all as a faction. I’m talking about the types of players that broke the rules within the faction, not the group entirely. Apologies if you may have misinterpreted that. 

[juicykiwi]

1 minute ago, Maca said:

I believe you’re taking my paragraph out of context which I’ll clarify on - the part where I’ve put “them types of players are not welcome here” does not mean it applies to you all as a faction. I’m talking about the types of players that broke the rules within the faction, not the group entirely. Apologies if you may have misinterpreted that. 

Okay, just looked as if you were blaming our faction as a whole for individual members which is never really correct unless leaders are purposely allowing rulebreaking to happen. I can see where you're coming from if it comes to one or two of our individual members and I agree with what you said here "EDIT: Without intending to be rude or confrontational, as an illegal roleplayer I also think the excuse of "there's nothing to do" for illegal factions to be incorrect and slightly lazy. There's plenty to do, people are just too lazy to research."

 

I would say though that admins do need to start helping illegal factions in a more positive way though and I really do think they need to stop interfering when it comes to small details and styles of RP. We were told at one point that we couldn't own a nightclub because it "didn't fit" the biker RP. Which really wasn't that true considering I've been to a club ran by a 1%er MC  a few times in real life, that was corrected however but it really did leave a bad taste in our mouths. There have been multiple instances where admins just tell you to stop RPing a certain way because it doesn't suit them, which is unfair really as you can't really account for taste and the things they pull you up on are often not totally outlandish. It can be a very intrusive negative involvement by the admins and doesn't particularly encourage creativity in RP.

[Guest]

The problem is that people fail to cite sources in their claims. If you were to approach FM about your nightclub issue and provided sources that were accurate and factual then we would’ve took it into consideration.

 

Saying you’ve been to a nightclub ran by one percenters in real life is like me saying I’ve met the Pope. Both of us don’t know if any of that is true and we can sing until the cats come home about it but only one of us know if that’s true or not. Provide a source? Maybe the roosters will come home to roost quicker.

[mala]

2 hours ago, Maca said:

To conclude my response to you guys anyhow, FM don’t voluntarily close a faction without a reason to do so and we certainly don’t block opportunities for people as long as they follow the continuity of a heavy roleplay server. People telling me that a female can run a cartel (which don’t exist in America because this isn’t Medellín) and then proceed to send us a link to Griselda Blanco will obviously be criticised because that would never happen on the West Coast of America.

Small bone to pick with this part. There is definitely a heavy cartel presence on the west coast and it affects everything from the drug & gun trade to kidnappings, extortion, and using coyotes/illegal immigration to further move their product in. It's not as heavy as it is in Colombia or Tijuana but the whole point of their existence there is to smuggle their product here, so they have satellite groups maintaining their power in their point-of-sale cities.

And on the other point, we're in 2018. Traditionally those cartel and mafia roles have been filled by men but there are plenty of crews run by or containing high-ranking officials that have been women.

 

Edit: since you're all about sources.. 

DEA Map of the different cartels and their drug dominance in the US

A more modern female cartel leader

And another female as the head of an enforcer group

 

On another note, I agree with Fuggle below. If it's roleplayed well and realistically, the stereotypes are allowed some wiggle room or else life gets very, very boring.

Edited November 23, 2018 by Havana

[Fuggle]

I haven’t played in over a month and I come on here every now and then, but I don’t quite get what you mean Maca, if something hasn’t been done irl it can’t be done here? So people are to copy other irl gangs, people etc yet are also supposed to be unique? Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, I don’t get why you get to choose what’s realistic or not, it’s a few opinions over an entire community. Like that nightclub thing, MC’s can’t have 1 cuz it’s unrealstic, so they are to stick to stereotypes of a dirty run down bar somewhere, stereotypes should be avoided and I guarantee there’s a lot more people here that know more about shit than you do. (Don’t take this as a dig)

[Topinambour]

4 minutes ago, Fuggle said:

o people are to copy other irl gangs, people etc yet are also supposed to be unique? Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, I don’t get why you get to choose what’s realistic or not

There has often been an issue, whether with FM or other admins in general, of "I know what's realistic even if I'm not documented / know nothing of the situation, so I'm telling you how to RP". This leads to very outlandish situations where someone from the staff team is telling an illegal group "no you can't do that specific thing, it's 'not realistic'" even though a lot of very good, very deep, very coherent RP led them to do that specific thing.

 

Problem is: the admins don't know about all that RP - which is fine, we have a lot of players. Nobody can reasonably expect them to follow ALL THE RP going on the server. However: they don't know but they also don't care.

 

One of the first things I was taught by the person who introduced me to RP back in 2002 was: "If a player does something weird, a good game master will ask why, a bad game master will say 'you can't do it'.". And it's usually true. A good game master will ask why that player is doing something weird, and find out. Maybe that player actually has a devious plan. Maybe his reasoning actually make a lot of sense. And... maybe it's a REALLY bad idea, but then he will have to face some possible IC consequences. 

 

The problem is, the usual reaction here is "you can't do that because I decided it's not realistic, based on nothing since I know nothing of your character". It's kind of an issue, and a recurring one in the GTA community. And again, it leads to situations that make no sense, both IC or OOC, such as "sorry, you see all the RP you did, over a long time, with your female character to develop a gang? Well, it's all voided because your char is a female and I decided it's not realistic - but I'm totally not sexist, you know, I have a few female friends.". And you have months of RP that are suddenly in limbo. 

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, Havana said:

Small bone to pick with this part. There is definitely a heavy cartel presence on the west coast and it affects everything from the drug & gun trade to kidnappings and extortion. It's not as heavy as it is in Colombia or Tijuana but the whole point of their existence there is to smuggle their product here, so they have satellite groups maintaining their power in their point-of-sale cities.

That isn’t a cartel as people try to roleplay on here though. Many people have applied to start up the Sinaloa Cartel here and tried to pull off something from Narcos.

 

You’re confusing cartel cell presence with actual cartels being on the West Coast. The majority of cartel presence is small time and it’s nothing like people try to pull off here.

[juicykiwi]

35 minutes ago, Maca said:

The problem is that people fail to cite sources in their claims. If you were to approach FM about your nightclub issue and provided sources that were accurate and factual then we would’ve took it into consideration.

 

Saying you’ve been to a nightclub ran by one percenters in real life is like me saying I’ve met the Pope. Both of us don’t know if any of that is true and we can sing until the cats come home about it but only one of us know if that’s true or not. Provide a source? Maybe the roosters will come home to roost quicker.

Our nightclub issue was quickly fixed by Pascal thankfully, as he agreed it was a bad call too. That being said though, it does shake your trust in admins when they decide to make a decision on our RP business without any input from our faction. I didn't even know we lost the lease until I logged in to find out and then questioned Adero about it.

 

It really isn't as crazy as meeting in the Pope by saying I used to visit a club worked by bikers and I really shouldn't have to give real life references for every aspect of our roleplay as that would be very time consuming, I'm sure admins could research this before making a decision on something like that and let's say for a moment that there was no evidence of MCs opening nightclubs in real life, would that mean it is impossible to do in GTAWorld? Is it really that outlandish? Criminals run both legitimate and underground businesses all the time to add to their income, it really isn't that unrealistic at all. Saying so, is demonstrably untrue.

 

This is exactly what I mean when there needs to be room for creativity and less interference from admins. I understand that there needs to be some moderation on realism but I believe they should be stepping in ONLY when it's bordering on the ridiculous.

Edited November 23, 2018 by Falrock