Fancy Toothpaste

It's convenient. Money is near meaningless in GTAW after a certain point, so people would rather pay for the convenience of buying a brand-new car and modding it from scratch than having to roleplay with a second-hand seller. If they are going to engage with the second-hand market, they expect the savings and convenience of not having to modify the vehicle themselves to be worth the hassle of actually roleplaying. It would be nice to see modifications be the exception, not the norm. Creating a demand for used vehicles with especially attuned engines or turbochargers could help to increase the value of second-hand vehicles and enrich the roleplay of everyone in the car scene; unfortunately every modification in GTAW has a linear progression and is easily attainable, so if you’re going to tune your engine you might as well max it out. Since anyone can just drive to their local garage and get their engine supercharged in five minutes or less, it’s just expected that a vehicle is modified.

happy new year

What other use is there to having your cup-size in your /examine?

Instead of making me run my pockets, people are gonna try to steal my pockets 😔

This is not a 1-1 economy. Most people don't get paid $4,000 hour in real life, and yet that's minimal wage in the game universe. This would agitate the situation more than it would help it. The lack of end users isn't caused by the fact that a hit is $200 of in-game currency, which is very, very low when you take into consideration the $200,000 starting cash, $4,000 minimum wage and $800 hourly passive income. This is a complicated issue but I'll try to briefly sum up some of the key points: - Many civilian characters are tied to legal factions and would require corruption perms to partake in even a banal habit. - Many civilian characters are unwilling to RP the adverse effects of drug abuse, and as such, don't engage with the system whatsoever. - Many illegal characters don't partake in drug use; only purchase drugs that they can later deal down the line to the very few users who exist. - Even those characters that do engage with drug-RP often times fail to RP addiction accurately and outright ignore drugs when they're inconvenient. - Getting high is way more fun in real life than it is in a video-game. If you lowered prices and flooded supply, you'd just end up with a shit-more drugs that aren't going anywhere.

Big support +1

In a practical sense, realism concerns itself with what happens in reality while authenticity is concerned with the canon reacting reasonably to itself. These aren't mutually exclusive; something can be both realistic and authentic, but sometimes these concepts veer from one another. In my opinion, it's more important for characters in the world to react to their surroundings in an authentic way than to attempt to perfectly mirror what exists in reality.

It's not, but people don't regardless. Even with all the research in the world, it can be difficult for someone from a completely different culture to grasp what LA is really like. Yes, but that doesn't really render my point mute. It's still a substantial liberty taken that undermines both the setting's realism, and authenticity. At the moment we have a daily murder rate that surpasses all of Mexico. Others have done the math, but it's a very tired topic so I'm not going to get into it now and derail this thread further. According to the staff-mandated IC population portrayal, the number of players that exist at any given time is the IC population. The decision has been referenced in many previous staff decisions. I don't agree with it, but we are indeed a city of 800 people. While I don't think that we should abandon realism completely, trying to emulate perfect "realism" without taking the player experience into consideration is very silly. In the interest of not pushing this topic too far off its initial course, we'll agree to disagree.

People already cry "unrealistic", even as the server currently attempts to emulate reality. There was a discussion not long ago about unrealistic mask usage. While some players argued that the use of masks in public was unrealistic, other players argued that the constant use of masks is an aspect of LA hood culture. Whichever side of that argument is right, isn't really the point; the point is that we have a vastly diverse player base, with all kinds of different life experiences, who live continents away from the current setting, and are either unwilling or unable to come to a consensus on what LA is really like. The continuity team does its best to try and ensure consensus among the player base, but it's very obvious that Los Santos is vastly different than LA: Weed isn't legal, the political landscape is dominated by the Republican party, crime rates are beyond skewed, federal influence is almost entirely absent, and on and on the list can grow. The limitations of having a population of 800 players to represent a city nearly four million, as well as game/script limitations, means that realism can never truly be achieved. While the reality - something we can all relate to - is a great benchmark for how to present the server's canon, plenty of liberties have already been taken with regard to that presentation of Los Santos as Los Angeles. Trying to cling to what is "realistic" in regards to running a server that attempts to balance its player experience has largely proved to be a futile exercise.

This. The unfortunate truth is many people pick and choose the aspects of reality they want while ignoring the rest. Unfortunately, a server of 800 people who all roleplay together as a semi-autonomous city-state can never accurately emulate reality with all its nuance and complexity. Any attempts to follow reality to a T just end up half-baked. The real goal should be to create a world that is authentic; a world that makes sense within its own canon without necessarily being 1-to-1 with reality.

I never understood the mapping trope of throwing random vines and foliage on every surface. My theory is that some mappers add stupid amounts of greenery thinking it somehow classes their business up, but it just ends up doing the opposite; it starts to look like a shitty interior trying to cosplay as a more lavish setting. People need to start mapping more practical interiors that actually attempt to match the exterior's aestetic. There shouldn't be people getting whiplash from stepping inside your property. That's just bad mapping. Overly lavish interiors are an issue already covered under the property rules and regulations. It would be nice if PM made it a little clearer on how we're supposed to go about reporting these interiors to them.

This really hits the nail on the head for many issues we see throughout the server. It feels as though the current administration is more interested in maintaining the status quo than creating a dynamic roleplay environment.

I agree with this to an extent. The problem for me is, that this is already supposed to be enforced but clearly isn't. Above is a quote from rule 6) character rules. The intention of these quotes are very clear, but the issue remains widespread. I agree with stricter enforcement of LEO name changes too. LFM should be monitoring these cases of name change abuse more effectively, just as IFM should monitor cases of name change abuse done by members in illegal factions and groups more effectively. The problem is, they can't; the issue is far too widespread. A more automated system could mitigate the limitations of human error: Just think about how much easier it is for PM to handle property inactivity now that it's automated. You're right, they will be alerted by the UCP that there's a search warrant on their character if they attempt to name change and it doesn't work. The system still catches the flies regardless. People who use the name change function to "test" if they have a warrant on them either already have OOC suspicions that they have a warrant on their character, or have already been made OOCly aware by someone with MDC access. In either case, they're already trying to abuse the name change system to get out of consequences. Confirming the warrant makes no difference at this point. At least this way it's not as convenient, and they have to use in-character means to lay low from the law; hiding their stash or whatever else, instead of getting off scot-free thanks to an OOC mechanic that's supposed to improve roleplay, not hinder it. If the person doesn't have a warrant on them but is still suspicious that they do for whatever reason, and they try to name change on the UCP to "test" their theory, they basically just wasted a name change for nothing. If they want to return to their original name then guess what? They got to burn another name change. The costs of "testing" if you have a warrant on your character, will start to outweigh the benefits. I also offered two other potential solutions to the issue: 1. We could put a cooldown on name changing the same slot so that serial name change abusers can't just continue to skip from character to character while keeping the same stash, every time they shoot a cop on dashcam at a traffic stop. 2. We could put a timer on name changes so that they don't happen instantly, but instead occur after a certain amount of time has passed. Admittedly, this wouldn't be my favorite solution because I'm the type of person who really tries to jump into my concepts right away, but it would at the very least give LEO's time to enforce pending search warrants. At the end of the day though, I'm just putting meat on the table. My idea of how the system should work is not the final say. There are countless ways the system can be improved. What's important is recognizing that there is indeed an issue, and implementing changes that help to limit abuse and improve roleplay on the server. Improvements should always be strived for, otherwise, nothing will ever get better. Incremental improvement is a lot better than no improvement at all.