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Vespucci 13 is one of the largest Sureño gangs on the West Coast. The gang calls Magellan Avenue it’s home. The gang’s presence dates back to the mid 1900’s, but is slowing down in numbers due to rapid gentrification. History: In the late 1940’s Los Santos’ development of freeway 405 forced Mexican American communities to move out west towards Vespucci, Del Perro, and Morningwood. As a result of the waves of lower income immigrants the Vespucci area earned the moniker “Ghetto by the Sea.” The area was known by the locals to be one of the cities largest tourist traps due to it’s easy access to the beach. Above sits Fernando Barela and Raymond Ayala from left to right. In the 1950’s Vespucci had a second wave of mass immigration with the population almost doubling. In this second wave came Fernando Barela and Raymond Ayala. Both were in their early teens when they met at Vespucci Middle School. Immediately the two grew a close bond and began to push marijuana and heroin for Ayala’s older cousin, ‘Magic’. The two were very successful in their trade and made a name for themselves. By the time they had graduated highschool they had younger family members selling for them. In 1964 they had amassed a group of almost thirty teenagers. It was then that the two decided to adopt the moniker Vespucci 13. The name clearly pays homage to both the Mexican Mafia and the area in which they lived. There have been several Vespucci 13 members who have affiliated themselves with the eMe such as Rene Blajos and Emilio Montoya, and the two groups keep a close relationship both in and out of the prison system. In the 1990's Vespucci 13 was one of the targets of a large gang injunction. Three gangs were tagged in the Far West Los Santos Gang Injunctions, and their activity on the streets was very low throughout this period. The gang injunction however did reach it's end and the gangs began to openly gather outside and resume to their ghetto lifestyles. Vespucci today: Vespucci trece is currently being led by Peter “BANDIT” Loyola and Tomas “SPOOKY” Ordonez. The gang has been losing power and numbers as a result of the rapid gentrification of far West Los Santos hoods, however there are quite a few active members spread among the organization's five cliques. The gang is known for its involvement in trafficking drugs for several organizations such as La eMe and Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations (MDTO’s). The key drugs pushed by the neighborhood are marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin. Vespucci 13 is no stranger to robbery. All sorts of robberies seem to go down in Vespucci, whether it be armed, home, or vehicular. Active Beef: CULVER CITY 13: The beef between Vespucci 13 and Culver City 13 is remarked as one of the largest current beefs in all of Los Santos both in measure of time and lives. Culver City Highschool and Venice Highschool were always bitter rivals in terms of sports. In the late 1960’s both neighborhoods claimed the same corner and had local drug dealers post up and deal drugs off of it. The two gangs did not like that the other had their dealers pushing on the corner they claimed as their own. Drug dealers from either gang were getting jumped back and forth until the fights grew larger. To protect the dealers and the claimed ‘turf’, members from both groups would stand on the block and press their rivals. The gangs were quick to involve themselves in massive brawls and fights, however guns were resorted to after only a few months. The homicide rate on the far west side of Los Santos shot up, and has yet to fall back down to where it once was. Each side has lost a lot of members and the beef seems to have no resolution because most current members of either gang have family who've been murdered by the other side. The picture above shows disrespect to the Del Perro 13 gang by crossing out DP13 tattoos and replacing them with Vespucci related calligraphy. 187 SMAKAS refers to penal code number 187 referring to murder, and "Smacks" being the DP13 gang diss. Del Perro 13: The static between Del Perro 13 and Vespucci 13 has been long going ever since the 1950's. The tension between the two groups originated as a school rivalry, however during a lowrider show in 2009 it escalated. Attending this show was a high respected Vespucci 13 member, Daniel Cortez, and a Mexican Mafia tax collector who were discussing politicks in Del Perro when several members of the Del Perro 13 gang recognized Cortez's tattoos. The Del Perro members instantly began pressing Cortez about his affiliations and where he was from before allegedly disrespecting the tax collector during a verbal altercation. During this altercation the tax collector stated his affiliation to the Mexican Mafia, and a Del Perro member disrespected said affiliation which was taken as disrespect to the Mexican Mafia. Del Perro 13 was ultimately greenlit by the Mexican Mafia and for months were the targets of a string of shootings. The best known attack in this web of murder is referred to as the Virginia Park incident. Isaias Lopez and Jose Romo-Soto were shot by Vespucci 13 members, killing Romo-Soto and gravely wounding Lopez. Lopez, on what he thought was his deathbed, attested that an African-American Vespucci 13 member was the driver and shooter involved in this incident. The shooter was eventually caught. Lopez ended up living and was marked as a snitch. This incident further alienated the two gangs and increased the already hostile tensions. The conflict between the two gangs has lived on for over 70 years and is still being acted on in modern times. Thread credits go out to @XIKand @Miggs

Hello everyone! Welcome back to another staff update! This has been a shorter month but just as busy as we've been working hard to improve the community for everyone! This month we want to give a big shout out to our development and modding team as they've been working really hard to bring new content updates out for us to have more awesome scripts and features on our server! With our goal of community enhancement this month, we've also been working really hard with our Forum Moderation team to give some extra attention to our forums. We have already put systems in place to standardize, clean up and organize guides so they'll become a lot easier to look up and understand for new and existing players. If you have created a guide or want to create a guide in the future stay tuned for our new instructions on how guides will be operating soon. We have also put in place a new system to efficiently and effectively forward all community suggestions for monthly reviews and implementations, ensuring that all of your great ideas are being heard and implemented into our server. We recognize that one of the largest concerns our community has is wait times for in-game and forum reports / requests. As this is an improvement we aim for every single month, we have been able to put some policies in place this month to hopefully help cut that wait time. Our forum moderation team has done a fantastic job cleaning up a lot of our forums this month and significantly bringing down reports and requests on the forums, and they will continue to grow and further bring down wait times. With our staff team growing in size every month, we also hope that more available admins will lead to lower in game wait times for reports, and will continue monitoring and working toward the reduction of wait times. As a final note, to end this month we also have to unfortunately say goodbye to our dear friend @Bombie. With real life responsibilities ramping up, he'll need to be stepping away from GTA:W for sometime and is passing the torch onto @Frezemis@effion. If you need anything PM related please reach out to those two instead of Bombie as he'll be shifting his work toward them over the next little bit before he's gone. We would like to thank him for all the hard work he's put into Property Management, and wish him the best of luck going forward. GTA:World Management Team Admin Promotions Game Administrator Level 3 to Game Administrator Level 4 @Shanks(Head of Illegal Faction Management) Game Administrator Level 2 to Game Administrator Level 3 @effion (Head of Requests) Game Administrator Level 1 to Game Administrator Level 2 @Invictus @jesscatXD @Wally Trial Administrator to Game Administrator Level 1 @Nightmare Night @Woona @Seaward Senior Support to Trial Administrator @MomoIsHere @rasbruu @Pepper @Naeno @JimmyCZ @Dawn @Kaz @JeffMan3 @harrison Support to Senior Support @TBattle @SandroXiX @Monster. @shiroq @Karner New Support Team Members @harry @Adv @cxn @Rohan. @Saccs @Vulcar @honey. If you were a staff applicant and were not given support you can check your application to see if it was marked as denied or reserved. If you have been denied you will need to post on your application and request the reasoning if you wish to learn more about why you were not accepted. Be sure to tag both@Groz and @Odin so they can respond as soon as possible! As there is often a large influx of denial requests Please allow us 48 hours to update the status of your application, once your application has been updated with (Denied/Reserved) you may then request the decision reasoning. Once requested please give us 72 hours to respond to any denial reason requests. All reserved applicants will be automatically responded to with our expectations for your reserved month, there is no need to request a response on applications marked "Reserved". Any denied applicants this month may not reapply until the staff applications open again in May for June 2021's staff update.

Just as the title says really. I'll jump straight into things and just outright voice my disdain for the new business licensing, especially disdain towards the costs that are attributed towards the licensing costs that are outlined in the recently-published handbook. It's an enormous cause for concern and as far as I'm concerned serves as nothing but a detriment for unique server businessses that operate as well as the overall quality of business roleplay. It's fair enough if this thread gets locked and staff request for this to be taken IC, but considering the OOC implications of the recent licensing handbook publication; I feel 100% secure in saying that a thread of this kind is important to keep up so that people can voice their opinions on the subject. For those who haven't seen the recently published page, below is simply a snapshop of the most important part of the business licensing application; the costs & available licenses for each business: As you can see, it's safe to say that paying for licenses is now a notably costworthy endeavour to approach and that certain business owners will be taking a notable amount of money out from their pockets. For some business owners who can easily rake in millions each month, these costs are pretty much nothing and this doesn't affect them whatsoever. For business owners though who work jobs in real life or those who operate niche businesses that focus more on roleplay than profits? This becomes a considerably huge issue that a lot of business owners on the server will face. Under the current licensing, stores will need to apply for the general conduct license at a minimum which isn't too much of an issue; since 30k can typically be made up rather quickly in under a month depending on the number of openings & money earnt from individuals entering the businesss. However, the moment that the other licenses are added on top of the general conduct; the cost immediately jumps from 30k up to an immediate 100k. For some businesses this is fine, but for the large majority; this is incredibly detrimental. There's a multitude of businesses that operate on the server at the moment who are focused predominantly on roleplay and less focused on profits, only earning money provided by the government for entrants and nothing else; who chances are may currently not hold full server activity due to a multitude of real life reasons. Under the new licenses, this means that they've got to (at a minimum depending on the business) scrape up at least 30k to pay the license. I'm sure I can speak for multiple people who work and are only able to play the server for a few hours a week when I say that it'd be absolutely soul-crushing to come home from work onto a roleplay server just to work again as opposed to... well, actually roleplaying. Not only will small businesses suffer hugely, larger businesses will also suffer as well as competition for business openings quickly becomes incredibly frustrating to deal with since every business will suddenly be opening in an attempt to earn enough money to pay off the licensing. Rather than seeing 2 nightclubs open in one night with all of them being packed to the brim, you'll see about 6 - 7 nightclubs instead with pretty much nobody present within them whatsoever. That's just for nightclubs alone, this doesn't take into account other business types such as bars, cafes and any other business variant. Every business will be ramping up their prices, and by subsequent, the quality of roleplay will suffer across the board as business owners neglect roleplay quality in favour of more frequent openings & profit-making. It'd literally mean that money would take priority over roleplaying. For example, I operate a mini-market which lets players roleplay having certain ethnic goods for sale that they can purchase; with the majority of my profits being earned purely from entrant payments and nothing else so that I can focus on the roleplay side of things. With the new licenses? I'd have to pay a total of $115,000 to cover the costs of just the General Conduct License, the Liquor Sales License and the Cigarette & Tobacco License just to operate a mini-market. I'd have to ramp up the prices of all the goods I sell in order to make up for the cost, especially considering that I operate a niche business that doesn't focus on money-making. Not only that, but considering I also have to balance my free time with university work; I don't always have the time to dedicate a few hours of my week to roleplaying, let alone opening my business. Players shouldn't have to join a roleplay server with their first thought being "I need to open my business to pay off my business licensing costs." as far as I'm concerned, especially ones who have limited free time as it is to roleplay. It's detrimental to the quality of overall roleplay and will just see prices being inflated as well as more businesses with less people in them being open. Money should never take priority over people's roleplay, ever. That's my opinion on the matter at least though regarding the current state. I'm eager to see if other players on the server at the moment hold the same sentiment as I do regarding this or if my argument doesn't reflect the large majority of current business owners.

SOUTH SAN ANDREAS

Devil’s Own Motorcycle Club From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Devil's Own Motorcycle Club (DOMC) is an outlaw motorcycle club that was formed in Reno, Nevada in 1976. DOMC has just four chapters, in San Fierro, Reno, Las Vegas and Los Santos. History Devil’s Own Motorcycle Club, nicknamed “The Devil’s” is a one percenter motorcycle club that was founded in Reno, Nevada, in 1976 after the Vietnam war. The founding members were Richard “Little Pete” Peterson and Martin “The Old Man” Campbell, both retired servicemen and motorcycle enthusiasts. The organization is predominantly white males and considered to be an organized crime syndicate by the United States Department of Justice. The mother chapter of the Devil’s is based in Reno, Nevada. The club was originally founded here by a rag tag group of former servicemen who felt they had been left behind by their country after fighting in Vietnam. The founding members loved nothing more than getting on their motorcycles and riding together, feeling the fresh air hit their face as they tried to get any form of excitement back in their lives after the war. Devil’s Own never started out outlaw, but things quickly escalated when multiple members of the club started struggling to find work in an effort to feed their families. These men, while most did not serve shoulder to shoulder felt an obligation to their fellow veteran, and fellow club member, and they made ends meet the best they could. This slowly descended into the outlaw motorcycle club style seen in the early 80’s and 90’s, which led to the new far more organised outlaw life seen across the west coast. Unlike the "Big Four" motorcycle clubs, the Devil’s Own to date have remained a fairly small, tight knit club. As of last recorded testimony there were only four charters in the world, and they were fairly confined to the western coast of America. The original chapter in Reno, being the biggest, handles a lot of the organisation for the other clubs, and also maintains a monthly church meeting with the various nomad members who have left their home chapter for somewhere that the Devil’s do not have any reach. In March 2021, a small crew of Devil’s Own Motorcycle Club members arrived at the city of Los Santos with the aim of starting their own chapter once they have settled in. Many one percenter motorcycle clubs have attempted to settle in Los Santos and its surroundings counties, and most of them have failed, even the most notorious motorcycle gangs have been unsuccessful in settling in Los Santos. Devil’s Own Motorcycle Club are rumoured to be looking at exploiting this and establishing themselves as a leading motorcycle club in the state. On the 16th March 2021, Devil's Own were seen with a North Los Santos patch, confirming reports of them settling in Los Santos. Colours The club can easily be noticed by their club colours, always making an effort to wear red and black to fit in with the club's logos and patches. This theme extends to their supporter clothing, with most of the red and black t-shirts and hoodies getting bought up the first day they are available by members of the club and their associates. There has even been an online store launched to support the demand for these products across the three areas the club operates in. The club’s logo and the centre of attention on the back of every full member of the club’s jacket or vest is their own rendition of the devil, facing behind them with a mouth full of golden teeth. This patch is meant to insinuate that the devil is always watching each club member’s back any time they are on club business, or are on their motorcycles. Membership Prospective members must undertake a three-stage process before being initiated to the motorcycle club, beginning as a hang around, before becoming a prospect and then probationary member of the club. The standard process is decided by each chapter president, and ends when the chapter's members vote unanimously to allow the probationary member to enter the club. A screening process is carried out to prevent infiltration by law enforcement. Upon becoming a patched member of Devil's Own Motorcycle Club, each member must sign their motorcycle over to the club. Devil's members must be male.

A member of the community made this list with the prices of the new vehicles making it easier for the OP to update. If anyone wonders where are the cars located and what their price is, here's a list. Credits to @Marty Noun's Motors: Albany Presidente - $98,784 (Registered); $82,320 (Unregistered) Benefactor Schafter 2010 - $109,872 (Registered); $91,560 (Unregistered) Albany Presidente C-STR - $118,944 (Registered); $99,120 (Unregistered) Mirror Park Dealership: Karin Everon (Non-Artic) - $136,080 (Registered); $113,400 (Unregistered) Sanders Motorcycles: Western Slave - $39,312 (Registered); $32,760 (Unregistered) LCC Templar - $48,384 (Registered); $40,320 (Unregistered) Western Wolfsbane 2010 - $50,400 (Registered); $42,000 (Unregistered) Western Hellfury - $55,440 (Registered); $46,200 (Unregistered) LCS Lycan - $55,440 (Registered); $46,200 (Unregistered) Western Diabolus - $56,448 (Registered); $47,040 (Unregistered) Western Angel - $57,456 (Registered); $47,880 (Unregistered) Western Freeway - $58,464 (Registered); $48,720 (Unregistered) Western Revenant - $62,496 (Registered); $52,080 (Unregistered) Western Sovereign 2010 - $65,520 (Registered); $54,600 (Unregistered) LCS Nightblade - $67,132 (Registered); $55,944 (Unregistered) Western Wintergreen - $68,544 (Registered); $57,120 (Unregistered) Western Wayfarer - $534,984???(Registered); $445,820??? (Unregistered) Downtown General Motors; Declasse Merit - $58,464 (Registered); $48,720 (Unregistered) Dundreary Landstalker G - $85,680 (Registered); $71,400 (Unregistered) Vapid Huntley - $85,680 (Registered); $71,400 (Unregistered) Downtown Autos; Dundreary Admiral Classic - $35,280 (Registered); $29,400 (Unregistered) Albany Esperanto - $39,312 (Registered); $32,760 (Unregistered) Dinka Hakumai - $42,336 (Registered); $35,280 (Unregistered) Declasse Premier Classic - $46,368 (Registered); $38,640 (Unregistered) Declasse Premier SS - $49,392 (Registered); $41,160 (Unregistered) Dinka Chavos - $52,416 (Registered); $43,680 (Unregistered) Bravado Recursion - $69,552 (Registered); $57,960 (Unregistered) Bicycle Shop: Scorcher C - $2,772 (Registered); $2,310 (Unregistered) Taxi Dealership: Albany Esperanto Taxi - $31,248 (Registered); $26,040 (Unregistered)

Short description: Change the custom license plate system to be stricter, and allow the ability to keep the custom license plate. Detailed description: Use the california DMV plate layout as a base for custom plates, disallow vulgar terms and silly plates like "Imacop", "Trapcar". When you sell a car, it should generate them a new number plate and you can keep the custom plate to attach to a new vehicle. Commands to add: N/A Items to add: N/A How would your suggestion improve the server? Match the current continuity and realism. Additional information: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/uploads/2020/06/reg17.pdf (Example of how the CA DMV handles custom plates)

The thread will follow development of @Itay_Waknine and his bastard brother, Naftali.

Special thanks to these people for making this possible: @mencurry@Y3@Selena@barks

Prices are too high. Expecting strip clubs to pay 150k every 3 months is absurd. These clubs already barely make profit after all the costs that need to be paid (dancers salary, bar staff salary, security salary, manager salary). These prices will only further make the types of businesses that require minimal investment while making larger profit margins more sought after instead of roleplay businesses that barely break a profit. This is not even accounting for if the business is leased and requires a monthly payment as well. You will end up with players just doing spam openings to farm their goverment aid instead of conducting quality openings.

About me; Hi, I'm Cloudy! Twenty years old and here to make you excited. Aren't you tired of your lover's wrinkly, old and off-putting body yet? In this place, things you see will revive your appetite! Remember, this place is where your sins will be locked away safely. I'll be regularly posting on here but if you want a special picture or video, then press the donation button! Donations

Short description: Tasers having a 60% chance of failing, they don't work as well as they do in real life. Detailed description: When you tase somebody, they're pretty much toast. This suggestion is in the interest of fairness and also makes it realistic. Tasers don't work as well as they do in real life. Commands to add: None. Items to add: None. How would your suggestion improve the server?: Would make it better rounded. As Doosty said it's a point and click win machine. It promotes play to win behavior. Additional information: N/A

gz to @effion @Wally @Nightmare Night @MomoIsHere @rasbruu @JimmyCZ @Monster. @shiroq @Karner @Adv!!! <333

The only way to fix this is to remove it entirely. Lowering the cost to 10%, 1%, it won't matter in the face of the fact that business licensing is just not an engaging avenue of RP for anyone - except the 1% of the community that finds some deeper meaning in spending their days referencing every business ad with a list to check whether their license has lapsed. We can blame the fall of the previous licensing attempts on Rockford and Co, but they really only accelerated what was going to happen anyways. It's about as asinine as scripted seatbelts. There are so many other things we could be working on - it's honestly disappointing to see licensing crop up again.

If Albert the fire equipment salesman comes by and can install it for you as real furniture items, it'd add some roleplay as well. With this infobox, people will just add it without meaningful RP just to go through the motions.

I understand a general business license for all operating businesses for let's say $10.000 per quarter, and with higher license costs for businesses who make a lot of profit in GTAW (automotive and gambling), but the ones that put a lot of effort in staffing and creating roleplay shouldn't be burdened with these costs. Yes, businesses make a decent chunk of money, but they also put in work to make roleplay happen. These licensing costs are too high.

Thanks everyone for the nice messages about getting the button.

Short description: A separate jail for children. It makes no sense that we have 12-14 year olds in jail alongside adults. Detailed description: A case I was handling recently saw a 14 year old child that stole a $1 soda in an adult jail. Just ridiculous and as unrealistic as can be. My suggestion is children 12-17 are sent to a juvenile detention center. In California, anyone under 16 cannot be tried as an adult so if you have a 16/17 year old that committed murder, sure they could end up in TTCF but if it’s not a murder or their under 16, don’t put them in TTCF. Juvenile detention centres are designed differently from adult jails and focus a lot more on education and try’s their best to not institutionalise the child. A child can’t cope with adult jail, it would break them, institutionalise them much more than juvenile detention and if they were to come out a fearless and ice cold savage with no emotions or empathy it wouldn’t even be unrealistic. I know this suggestion will require new mapping, rules and staff members but it’s worth it. Our current system is actually highly illegal and against the convention of the rights of the child set out by the United Nations. The juvenile detention center can even be within the TTCF if we’re struggling for man power. Just make it a separate pod to the ones adult goes in. Commands to add: N/A Items to add: Juvenile detention center. How would your suggestion improve the server? Increase realism and immersion, increase roleplay quality, new venues of roleplay. Additional information:

Congratulations @honey. @cxnand @Vulcar!!!

Smilesville, you know I love your posts, but I'm going to have to drop a fat disagree on this. Now 80% of all start-up businesses fail within their first year, and 90% fail within their first two years. Bars have a lot of moving parts and a poorly run bar will easily fail, and if it does keep its doors open it can be coasting at an underwhelming performance for its whole life cycle. But as someone who, before COVID, was running 3 bars in real life and closely interacting with dozens of bar owners, I can tell you with certainty that they are a lucrative enterprise. You're not absolutely printing dummy money, but bars make out well--and most importantly they make out well for everyone involved in them. I'll also point out that your benchmark may be off, because you just described a profitability margin of 10-15% which is pretty fucking decent across the board. Most businesses strive to turn a 10-15% profit when all bills have been paid for. I will say I've been fortunate to work with bars that clear markedly above that. This, however, is true. If your bar isn't bringing in customers, you aren't making money. The trick with bars in real life is figuring out how to keep the demand consistent throughout the whole day (rather than just a spike at night) and throughout the week (rather than just weekends). I will disagree a little with that as well. We theoretically do have the numbers to simulate a good rush. The problem has less to do with how many people we have on the server and more how long things take on this server. Your bottleneck is not the population. All you need to prove this is run a theoretical simulation: My usual Saturday night rush in a bar looked like a steady stream of 5 people coming in every couple minutes. That's possible on GTA:W. In real life, if I have 5 people come up to my bar, I can serve all of them and take their payment within about two minutes. On GTA:W, it often takes 2 minutes just for that group of 5 people to start placing their order because of the time it takes to RP. The problem on GTA:W is time. We are OOCly human beings with our own lives apart from our characters, we play GTA:W as a game. Some of us have more free time than others, but we are all constrained by time. Our openings last 2-3 hours, not 8-16 hours. A minute on GTA:W is not equivalent to a minute in real life while portraying most actions and conversations, and our ability to multi-task on GTA:W is severely crippled compared to real life. (In real life, I can have a conversation with my next 5 customers while fixing the drinks for my first five and it's not much more work for me than doing each one one at a time. On GTA:W, I can theoretically "RP" multi-tasking, but the end result is I still need to *type* all of that) Ding ding ding. Here's the big one. The #1 cost driver for night clubs and bars is labor expenses. Now, I am a huge proponent of businesses on this server having automatic script pay for employees, that is something I'd been suggesting on GTA RP communities for over 10 years. And I get that night clubs/bars need a bit of a nerf compared to more "niche" business types so that there is some incentive to play these businesses. But currently the artificial cost to labor makes hiring staff for businesses like this a right hassle. The meta, as Smilesville points out, is for the owner to do as much as possible. You look across the server and add up all the most popular bars which open most frequently and have been around for longest, almost all of them are owner-operated. You'll walk inside and it's this big cool bar, and it's just the owner standing there bartending. Usually around server reset time so they can do "one" long opening and make 40k. Now this of course is rooted in the money chase, but it also has to do with OOC ease and flexibility. Handling staffing is hard enough IRL when you're dealing with real human beings who you're paying real money they need to really survive with. In-game, it's even harder because everyone has different OOC schedules, time zones, and drives to play. It's really, really hard to run a business with lots of employees just getting them all together in one place and keeping them interested in playing. Add to that hassle that you also need to pay them a rather excruciatingly high hourly rate as dictated by an artificially set market floor, labor is just a massive pain in the ass. This is helping ruin the opportunity for people to make more complex, multi-faceted businesses. I've stood on the subject of money for a little bit, and I think it's an important subject in the sense that while e-maniez =/= RP, e-maneiz are still IC. Costs and expenses are (mostly) IC. At any point, someone can take any of my business's cash outlays as in-character because that's how our server works. To that end, running a business at a sharp loss "for the roleplay" is still ICly running a business at a sharp loss. How does my character justify running a $50,000/opening kitchen "for the roleplay" when it brings in only $3,000 in revenue for food sold? I will agree that the costs for these licenses are too high, but it seems that we are all in agreement about that. Nervous is in agreement. Bombie in agreement. Pogis and his team are in agreement. So here's the part I want to address: Business Licenses are good for this server. We are a heavy RP community. I still feel like the standards are not equal between "legal" RP and "illegal" RP, but not only is that a conversation for another thread, but I can also tell that the admins really are trying to get that standard closer and closer together. I don't think high standards are a bad thing. We all owe it to ourselves as heavy roleplayers to strive to do better. I think all of us can agree that the state of businesses on this server is really lackluster. We have a lot of really generic and poorly run businesses where everything just seems like an afterthought. Part of that is because this is a video game and running a business is hard work, even a virtual one. But part of this is because there is no real enforcement or oversight short of someone reporting you to RPQ or PM. Business licenses play a big role in real life. Almost every business decision I make in operating a real life bar hinges around our liquor license and our relationship with the liquor board. Our liquor license is why I make damn sure every single patron, no matter if they look 21 or 81, has to show me their ID. Because that's the state law, and we need to cover our ass in case things go down. That's also why we don't over-serve people, because if someone gets absolutely shitfaced at my bar and kills someone on the way home, our country's laws are such that yes, they literally can come after my bar with a lawsuit and assign us a percentage of responsibility for that. And if we fuck around and run a ridiculous bar, the liquor board will just take our license and we're stuck with a useless box we're paying rent on. I'm excited to see bars, night clubs, and other businesses held to a higher standard. I'm excited for more IN-CHARACTER oversight rather than strictly OOC oversight. If your bar is not checking IDs, serving minors, and generally operating poorly, it should have consequences. And more importantly, if your business doesn't really have a need to be selling alcohol, you shouldn't be doing it. So how do we make business licenses something that feel important, that make people think twice? Well, that's the challenge. Price is one way. Liquor licenses are relatively cheap in real life, just compared to the costs of doing business. There are usually other fees, and the big expense with liquor is paying taxes on the liquor itself. To put it in more concrete perspective, I pay about $400 a year for each bar to sell liquor in my state. However I also pay about 35% in taxes for all alcohol I purchase. You can quickly imagine where most of my liquor-related expenses towards the government are going. Of course, every state is different, in California, by far the most expensive state, it costs $15,000 a year (but liquor taxes are about 25%). That's pretty damn expensive, but that's also for a FULL YEAR. By GTA:W's 10:1 economy, $150,000 a year would mean $12.5k a month. While $15,000 for a year seems like a lot of money IRL, and it is, keep in mind that a pretty average bar can clear that in one weekend if competently run. I think the other way is by making the application process a bit more thorough. Of course, we don't want to just waste people's time--both those applying and the poor unfortunate souls who have to handle all the applications. The thoroughness can come in the oversight and the consequences. Getting a liquor license isn't overwhelmingly hard even IRL (a bit time-consuming and pedantic, but not hard) -- the hard part is getting in trouble over your liquor license. Making an enemy out of the Liquor Board is a good way to have your business effectively shut down. That's where I think more of the "challenge" can come in. Do you really want to bother with a liquor license for your business when it means you're subjecting yourself to that much more oversight? Does your mafia family really want to run another bar legally and above the table when it means that they have opened a massive back door into their operation for the government to snoop and meddle with them? Suddenly, investigative bureaus have a really simple way to leverage insight into your operations through the Liquor Control Board. And trust me, yes, these organizations work closely IRL, and trust me the Liquor Board will gladly sell your ass up the river the first second the state police or FBI comes knocking.

Throw back... @Powley @Moe @harrison

As far as I'm concerned, I feel like people would abuse the fact they have "protection" from running to a hardware store and just buying something with zero roleplay involved, and it adds nothing to any construct where you could consider this element of business roleplay as "heavy". In fact, it diminishes the elements of heavy RP already existing. Businessmen and women should be taking the safety of their property seriously. Safety should always be at the forefront of any business' operation, particularly because the punishment for being negligent in their conduct for whatever reason is heftier than the original effort to ensure that any safety issues are fixed. With that being said, as I mentioned before, fire safety equipment needs to be tailored to each and every business. They have different structures, use different materials, are of different sizes, and have different purposes. Sprinklers, as example (because it's the most known equipment) are suitable in some locations where they may not be in others. It's down to the business owner to plan this when they're coming up with this business idea. Again, safety is the foundation of any property, not an afterthought. I have never agreed with people having to pay for extra slots for fire safety equipment. However, much of this is because, as mentioned before, people see it as an afterthought rather than a foundation, which is contrary to any logical business operation. In San Andreas, the majority of business owners see their property as money machines, and many are hostile towards anything which steps foot in the way of such practice. In short: I disagree with your proposed solution (regarding the hardware store - not the compromise of no slot equipment), because it detracts from the "heavy" roleplay aspect of having to own and manage a business.

Business Licensing was being prepared to launch as of today, March 1st. However, due to the feedback we've received on the initial fees (which were also approved by Property Management), the license fees will be lowered in order to take more complex businesses (such as nightclubs and stripclubs) into account, which generally require more preperation and have lower income due to higher staff costs. While it is hard to strike a fair balance with the currently varying income of different business types, we'll try our best to come up with a system that doesn't penalize any in particular. The City of Los Santos as a faction doesn't intend to take the fun out of business roleplay or to make them unprofitable. For the time being businesses aren't required to apply for a license. Thank you for everyone's input so far!

Fucking stupid. Prices are just too high in my opinion.

I'm currently building up the B.J. Smith Recreation Center in Chamberlain as part of City Gov. One of the initiatives I'm working on is a Department for Social Services which will include (if there's an interest for it) Social Workers. A possibility I'm exploring (because of course legality on this will be an issue) is that repeat youth offenders are assigned a Government Social Worker within the Center so they can be supported, monitored and deterred from crime. ... obviously this isn't going to work most of the time because these teenage characters are there to explore crime, but it might be an alternative option if accepted so kids are still held accountable in a minor way and also given new RP opportunities.

Username: localcryptids.com Comment: @doubletrioHe is -very- real! We were sent yet another photo by a Sandy Resident just today! Photo taken by anonymous Blaine County Resident, in the Mount Gordo region.

Perhaps put the player temporarily into another dimension for the test drive, since the point is largely an OOC thing to begin with, that being you as a player aren't sure what you want. This would let players safely test the cars limits and handling (good for both legal people and those who might wish to use it for criminal purposes) before committing.