shaobadman

My character is 28 and has very occasionally had passengers older than him. Nearly everyone who actually bothers to RP an older character has been great in my book. Could just be a thing of numbers though. The moment I started, I did realise that it's a good job for seeing some variety, but older people have still been rare and I'm 100% sure someone's going to come in with a "well they drive their own cars because they're OLD so you can't see them".

I know this is a completely different thing but taxi drivers face this too, and it's ridiculous. And I'll say now, same with truckers, that it's nothing to do with us losing out. It's the waste of time that comes from poor RP that's only happening because that player wants to "win". I've not really lost much at all from either occasion, but when people call taxis, providing them with their real name and number before robbing them, you know that this branch of criminal RP needs staff investigation. I don't even know how these people get onto the server, one of them had over five complaints on him and mine was the icing on the cake to get him banned, I'm sure there are many like him as well. It's ruining taxiing for me as I'm sure it's ruining trucking for players. At least for taxis it would make more sense to rob a driver without using the /taxi command, and maybe truckers will be saved if every payment is done by bank.

No wonder him and Shao get along.

Good points, thanks for your input and thank you for staying on topic.

Even in 2018 I needed a group just to RP on my older characters. This wasn't necessarily a group of fellow old characters, just people I knew I could rely on to skip all the "aren't you old?" stuff and accept that there's a middle aged person there. It helps a lot.

I can understand a senior citizen having a polite experience since many would find it hard to resist or call them names, but what's it been like on your other characters between 30 and 50? I'm not saying I haven't had positive experiences before when I had these characters in their prime years ago, it's just different this time around.

Call me a casual but I get a lot of RP inspiration from TV/movies (which is never perfect, but it's something) and it helps me do exactly what you're describing with older characters. I find it enjoyable even though I'm not that age myself. It's an alternative perspective in the server. Caricatures are generally a problem on this server, I think we can all name some that even go beyond age characters. I don't really mind the "perfect" appearances too much if their portrayal and interaction is at least decent and entertaining.

I may have completely missed this part of the topic, this already exists on the server in other instances but it hasn't existed for age in a while if I remember correctly. It's anecdotal, that'd be why the thread is posed as a question. The characters in question already exist and have done since 2018, I think I'd have to ease them back in or make a group like that movie RED.

I checked out south LS several times this last month (excluding Rancho), and unless I was severely unlucky, the majority seemed to be teenagers, early 20s at a push. I wanted to avoid being the gimpy geezer that talks to teenagers. It might be confirmation bias, though. I'm at a stage where the influx of teenagers is still a shock to me, that I feel like I'm seeing them everywhere.

Why do people need to be coaxed into doing this by the script, though? With the server hitting 700-800 at peak times you can definitely find someone out there who will allow you to show them your mechanic RP. How will that eliminate the RP? I'm personally fine with mechanic RP when it's done well and organised, I'm just trying to understand your response here, because it's coming off as "if people aren't made to RP with me on something they're not interested in, I'll have to find people who are interested" but I'd be happy to be corrected. Also your argument of "go to a garage in real life" does not seem entirely valid, considering that going to a garage in real life is a chore that isn't meant to be fun (depending on your mechanic) unlike playing on a RP server, and more often than not, as others have said, witnessing a vehicle modification does very little for character development of the customer. I can see some niche scenarios occurring where maybe they take some interest and become a mechanic themselves, but besides any other specific example it's very one-sided.

Evident in the average young middle/upper class character's attributes which almost looks like a love poem about themselves, right down to the pleasant smells. I think it's also what they're into or how far they're willing to go to put in effort. I'm not even 25 but I have several characters older than me because it's far too monotone to RP my own age and do that all round. Understandably though, that's not everyone's flavour, and familiarity's easier. Not doubting you, I just find this odd because when I joined GTAW in 2017 it seemed like a much higher standard of RP than I was used to and before then I could never think of creating characters of different ages, with flaws and actual background stories which are unfamiliar to me but figured out through RP. This server helped me do all that, but the active player base has quadrupled since 2018 and it seems to have found its own footing with the average character and looks quite set in that way unless it's just some trend. ULSA completely makes sense, I think it's great that there's a place for late teens/young adult characters to congregate, but everything else (including south LS) is predominantly teenage and I'm wondering if this is a phase or if it's been stuck like this for years and has no sign of changing, because in my mind the server's setting becomes this weird anomaly of a county where 30-40 is seen as old, not just in young circles but everywhere. It's a little demotivating to essentially be limited to an age range, where going for a higher age turns interaction/RP into hard mode.

since i started playing again, i noticed way more non-black characters speaking in aave and i don't understand it at all, i'm not from the usa though maybe white people do speak that way over there? unless they're literally trying to rp the guy from offspring's pretty fly for a white guy, it's extremely difficult to take on board

Do these exist on the server anymore? Is there even a place for them? I try to keep a good variety of ages between my characters and have some in their 30s/40s, made in 2017/18 when it was more "acceptable" to have and RP on them. Now a middle aged character can be anywhere in public, nowhere particularly youth-oriented, and be called out on their age because they're so rare in the city. I've been back for a month now and there's more characters under 20 than I can count, an okay amount of characters in their 20s (which used to be the norm) and hardly anyone above the age of 30. Even years ago there weren't too many but the average age was still around mid-20s. At that point, I had a South LS group (people living in the same building) with good variety in age and it was enjoyable community (and mildly criminal) RP. I'm still having a rough time adjusting to the weird factor of Los Santos being dominated by teenagers (and young adults at a stretch), even my main character (late 20s) has almost a decade on most people they meet (I /examine all my taxi fares). The entirety of LS feels like a uni city even though it's meant to replace LA. Since you can't really break the status quo or force people to diversify, I'm wondering if it's a waste of time to have a character in their 30s/40s, or if I should be sending one to a life sentence in prison just to get some RP on it. I genuinely enjoy being on an older character from time to time but people that age can't keep talking to teenagers/very young adults - aside from the obvious issue of it being creepy and awkward, a 40 year old only has so much to say to 16 year old kids without being their parent, relative, mentor or some other age-relevant relationship. So far it seems like it only really works as a background/novelty character.

I have similar thoughts on this, Topinambour said it best when this discussion came up in 2019. Nothing wrong with it between parties who actually enjoy the experience but it's just a barrier for many players.

This is something I've wanted to say but thought I'd get bombarded with disagreement, because surely if it's a feature then the majority must be fine with it. They just don't work very well. Even in 2018 when they required a mechanic's presence, basically everyone had the mechanic job just so they could mod their cars. I don't think the RP itself is the problem, you do what you have to and nobody can fault you on it. The issue definitely comes from how the server handles it. It's overwhelming for mechanics, it's tedious for players. It needs some balancing, it's overly dependent on other players right now.

My only theory for it being this way is that management wanted to curb the number of stupid looking cars on the street, you might remember how bad it got in 2018. When I came back and saw how garages changed while other services stayed the same, this was my first assumption and I couldn't fault them on it. However if that's not their aim then it could really use some work. People can't get their vehicles done, even for small modifications, in their own time. When one (and usually it is just one) opens up, everyone piles in and you end up waiting an undetermined amount of time (in my experience, garages don't seem to have a queue system) as they have to roleplay the modifications. Last time I had to wait about 30 minutes just to get a sign removed from my taxi. Then there's the problem of those unable to play at peak times. I think garages should work the same way as other services, even if visiting an unmanned garage puts a price penalty on the visiting player. Or if one garage has active workers then closed ones stay closed, but if none are open, have them all allow self service like 24/7s and make the player wait five or ten minutes after picking their mods to simulate players working on it.

surprised me as well since we're always seeing arguments about following los angeles and embracing the realism

i went into gtao and checked, there's a crappy afro for men and a slightly better afro for women

This would be great - too many fares get accepted and it's a roulette because some drivers don't want to go to certain locations, we shouldn't have to accept fares just to see where they are, so having location and destination as prerequisites for requesting a taxi would be great. The taxi script feels fairly abandoned right now.

isn't there a rule against this thing? it's covered in common courtesy, i think there's some leeway in real life emergencies otherwise i've seen advice years ago to not get into rp scenarios if you suspect something's coming up

wtf you're still around

I agree - if anything I feel that they should've prioritised making rules on time/distance first, to make replacing LA/southern California seem more valid, but it was missed out. Hard to say if they'll ever get to it since most good ideas (and good questions) about continuity have mostly been given standby answers, so it seems like it could take a while.

If as much effort went into creating a proper fictional setting as it does in replacing California, this wouldn't be a problem, but it still wouldn't matter to people who really want it one way and not the other, similar to when people dismissed any feature they didn't like as "too RPG". It's normal in GTA 5 where the length of a day is 48 minutes and characters refer to distances as such. Trevor doesn't live a few miles out or a five minute drive from Michael, he lives a few hours away in the story. That's not the case in GTAW. "people should be used to dealing with it" isn't a solution, either.