GHawkins

I certainly get what you're saying. And I'd have loved to see it in another way, but you have to take into consideration that actions against an NPC, in this case animals, always have less impact than actions against another player. You shoot the deer with the .22 LR, he's not going to go in /b and complain that you shot him with an improper calibre. Although it sure affects your roleplay, which is a disadvantage, you're not creating a conflict with another player. Meanwhile, if you get shot in the face with a .308 for only 20 damage, you can bet someone is going to go to /b "RP the .308!!!! you're supposed to play dead!" And then when you counter that it only did 20 scriptwise damage, it's likely going to end up in a shitshow with an admin involved because /b "You are powergaming you can not survive a .308 to the face!!!!!111111!!eleven!!11" I'd say however unfortunate for the person hunting, the first scenario is preferable to the latter.

I think the .22 is a way to explain why the hunting rifle does only 20 damage to player characters. Increase the calibre of the weapon, you'd have to logically increase the damage to player characters as well. Having a player take a .308 to the chest for only 20 damage is a little bit silly. Consequently, if you increase the calibre and thus the damage it would do to a player, it would become a viable way to eliminate other players. Like mentioned in the changelog, the scope makes it a very powerful weapon if it also gets a buff to the damage. And I don't think we'd want gang warfare to subsequently be gangs sniping at one another from the roofs of buildings. I very much like the hunting system and I would love to see an even more in-depth system, as I'd certainly interact with it. However, I think it's sadly being held back by the possibility for abuse.

I recently read a book that touched on the escalation of conflict. It's interesting to see how the people in game mimic real life in the steps and behaviour, except in a very much condensed fashion. And at the end, you can see where GTAW goes off script, which results in a rate of escalation that simply does not happen in real life. Rory Miller calls it the "Monkey Dance", or MD. Humans are not unlike animals in that regard; Just like how monkeys fight, deer lock antlers and snakes coil around each other, humans fight each other over status and territory. It's apparently genetically written into us to try and impress those around us by rising to the challenge giving by someone trying to impress those around them. In real life, the Monkey Dance has a couple of steps; 1. Non verbal challenge like a stare. 2. Verbal challenge. 3. Approach to signal intend / willingness to fight. 4. Squaring off which may involve physical contact such as pushing or may simple be more verbal exchanges. 5. Fight. When in game, you can see players follow these steps instinctively without realising it, usually in rapid speed. Which isn't uncommon in real life, however the difference between game and real life comes from the willingness of people to call it quits. Whereas in real life some people are inclined to back out of the MD at any point before step 5 while trying to save face, in game this rarely happens. People instinctively try to save their character's face by not backing out. Thus whereas in real life many MDs end with either party backing out, in game the majority of them reach step 5 and burst into a fight. And that's where GTAW further disconnects from real life; MDs in real life usually are non-life threatening violence. The use of violence is to submit the other person and gain status. In GTAW, loss of face appears to be unacceptable for many people which results in a further escalation of violence with either knives or firearms. And if loss of face happens and someone gets knocked out or beaten, it's usually avenged with an escalation of violence at a later date. There's no incentive to back out of MDs in game. You don't feel your character's dislocated jaw because he engaged in an MD with someone in a club, or the concussion, or whatnot. Nor do you feel the stab wound your character got because you decided to escalate it even further. There's no reason for many people in game to not engage the other person, while there's a lot of perceived reasons not to lose conflict with another person. And because of that, I think it'd be very hard to root out the rapid, unrealistic escalation problem that plague many hostile interactions.

If we're talking about the chat not displaying names when calling from a payphone (have not used a payphone yet), then it's indeed odd. I can recognize a person I'm familiar with by voice, regardless of what phone they call me with. But that's something we can't portray in a text based setting, so the names being hidden without actually using anything to alter one's voice is a weird choice.

Damage being synced is something entirely different than damage being persistent. What I understand from it, damage being synced simply means that if you crash into something in Paleto Bay, that damage shows up on players that see you when you drive into the city an hour later. Damage being persistent would mean there is no way to fix any damage on your car other than through IC means, regardless whether it was caused by IC events or not. But I think that would be up to server scripting to implement and not to Rage. As far as I know, the exact reason /vpark is free and available everywhere is so you can despawn your car and respawn it if needed because of nonsensical damages.

On my previous roleplaying server, I found myself usually at the center of discussions like this (comes with leading the DOC which would be majorly impacted I guess, aside from the jailed players). And from all those years, the only thing I have seen that works is when the punishment has consequences, potentially long-term consequences, which are not easily overcome. If a player risks losing assets, positions or other things they worked for, they either have to become more careful, or risk losing everything. However, the counter argument of "it's a game" always pops up. Punish a character too heavily and you start punishing the player OOC. But you want to punish the character, not the player. But punishment by definition is something "not nice", which means you will hit the player as well. But you play the game to have fun, not to do "not nice" things. But technically, if you do a crime, it means you did a "not nice" thing to someone else. So you should be willing to accept a "not nice" for the "not nice" you caused. But you play the game to have fun, not to have "not nice" things happen. In the end, it's a bit of a catch 22. I can sadly tell you this does not necessarily lead to more roleplay by definition. A lot of work and constant effort, from admins, law enforcement, gangs and the regular players, is required to get to this point. And even if it's achieved, slack for only a few moments and you may lose it all. Prison is meant to not be a fun experience. Being sentenced to prison by definition forces someone into another roleplay environment than they want to be in. And that immediately shows in the way they behave themselves in an environment where they are regulated in their freedom; The character doesn't want to be there, but neither does the player behind the character. They want to decide what they do, when they do it, in their nice car or in their house and with the people they want to roleplay with. Prison takes that away. Prison roleplay will always be close to my heart, because of all the opportunities it offers. But you either have to voluntarily be there, or have a certain mindset in order to really roleplay in it. Not many people have that mindset and even less people have the knowledge about US prison systems to do it all realistically. This relates to my first bit; Forcing a player to stay and interact in an environment they really, really don't want to be in does not necessarily improve the experience. Usually, the opposite happens. People start resisting the environment, trying to push themselves away from it. Or they log in only to AFK and be done with it until they can go off again. That's basically the nuclear option but it would work. But many people are ignorant of the US prison system so they just act out what they think they should act out, however unrealistic it is. That's the problem with prison roleplay, it requires specific knowledge to do right which can't be condensed into a paragraph of text.

For starters, I find that the inferior option to actually getting in the car and pulling its paperwork out to examine it. It should be there form an in-character point of view. So it'd be illogical for my character to whip out his phone to ask about the paperwork sitting not a meter away in the glove compartment. Secondly, I am not the actual owner of the vehicles so last time I checked, it gives me nothing. The faction leader owns the vehicles, I am only in an in-character position that requires me to check the insurances and pass on when they are expired. Although vehicles are accessible to everyone in the faction, going to mechanics and upgrading the insurance and such is reserved for the scriptwise owner.

I'm not going to support this suggestion as it stands. Why? Because it would prevent me from checking the faction vehicle's insurance status, which I roleplay at least once a week by checking the papers which are kept in the glove compartment of the vehicle. Now changing it so that /vstats only works when you are actually inside the vehicle is something I can get behind.

Although your character is entirely yours to figure out, he or she is not a blank canvas anymore by the time you start playing them on GTA World. Let's assume you apply with a character that's 18 years old. That means you have to fill in those 18 years. Your character has had their entire childhood already, they had relationships, romantic or friendly, that changed them and the way they look at the world. They have had experiences they learned from. They have dreams they want to chase, or have already seen crushed. They have been in accidents or events that formed their fears, or overcame obstacles that bolstered their self confidence. They are just fresh out of school and eager to get out there, or they didn't have the benefit of an education and have been on their own to survive. The older your character, the more you have to figure this out. A character without a proper background is a character that isn't well thought out. Everything you have experienced so far in life has shaped you to be you, in one way or another. You're simply asked to do the same for your character, detailing those defining moments that made them who they are and how they see the world. And that does not mean your in game experiences don't matter. They just have to make sense in relation to the character you created and what they experienced so far.

That's not elitism, that's enforcing requirements to join. Imagine if you go at 20 miles an hour down a highway on the left lane with your hazards on and the trunk of your car open with the seatbelt indicator incessantly pinging at you. Then when you finally steer into a ditch after the officer in the cruiser behind you has been screaming at you to pull over for five minutes, you go "Hiya officer, sorry about this but I have no idea how to use this thing. Is the accelerator on the right or is it the other pedal?", there's not a police officer in the world that would start explaining to you how to operate the car and let you continue. You're supposed to know how to operate the car before you drive it, or have someone next to you that is in the process of teaching you. But you arrange that before you head onto the highway, not while you're already on it. And I keep talking in metaphors it seems, but GTAW is that highway where you already need to know what you're doing. Setting realistic requirements and enforcing them isn't elitism. Considering everyone "unworthy" because they are not on your level that is "high above" the requirements is. Elitism is considering it bad roleplay to do "/me grabs the cup and takes a sip of the tea." as opposed to "/me wraps his index and middle finger through and around the handle of the blue Chinese porcelain cup, bringing it up to his lips and taking a gentle sip of the Earl Grey flavoured tea, which has cooled enough to not burn his lips or tongue but still at a pleasant 56 degrees Celsius." Both are entirely acceptable ways to say the same thing. But not accepting "/me grab cup and drink tea" isn't elitism the way I see it. And this is an idea I could get behind. Because reading a guide usually does not work as well as actually getting thrown into a scenario with people that are either learning as well or are teaching. People improving actually get live feedback and such on their actions and how to better portray their characters. Especially if not just "what" and "how" are discussed but also "why".

Well, doing exactly that. Getting experience in the "field" is a guaranteed way of improving yourself. Find a place you can work on your English and your roleplaying skills where the standards are not held to the highest levels. This however does not mean you have to find the shittiest place to go to and try to slug your way through it. But working towards a goal, improving enough to give GTAW another shot, should serve as a good deal of motivation.

One thing people need to keep in mind is that not everything is or should be accessible to everyone at the start. You won't become a surgeon without going to medical school. You won't become a judge without having studied law and having experience in the field. You won't become a general without having gone to a military academy. Exceptions to all these exist of course, but they are not the norm. GTA World isn't the place to start on your journey of roleplay. I get the feeling that GTA World was meant to be the final destination for people interested in it, a place where people that already have experience can play together with high expectations of one another. This means that those that don't meet these expectations generally find themselves straightened out or removed. Is it harsh? Yes and I have sympathy for the people that join with the best of intentions but end up hit with heavy measures. Looking back at how I was when I started roleplaying on LSRP back in 2009, I actually cringe at myself. Had it been GTAW I joined back then, I'd for sure have been banned. But LSRP gave me the opportunity to improve and learn and over the years I got better. But the problem there was that the differences within the community were as night and day. You never knew if the person approaching you was going to provide you with a high quality roleplaying experience that really made you go like "Man, this was great stuff" or that person was going to do /me grab gaurd gun /coin heads /do i grab gun and shoot gaurd /b give gun don't pg (Not making that one up either). On GTAW, I no longer have that fear in the back of my mind that I should be ready to counter such questionable roleplay because everyone is held to higher standards. The quality of the average player is much higher, resulting in a much more enjoyable experience for a whole load more people. And I think the administration team as a whole (including management) is determined to keep a massive difference between player qualities from manifesting. GTAW wouldn't have given me the same opportunity as LSRP did, to improve to the point where I am at now, but GTAW isn't meant to be the academy, it's meant to be the post-graduation job. *edit: That being said, I realise I forgot to mention an important aspect on all this; on-the-job-training. Because that's what GTAW does allow. People that have the basics down and are comprehensible in written English get the opportunities to improve and find their way here. For these people, GTAW is a place to learn. My prior points were mainly aimed at those who are encountering (English) roleplay for the first time.

The number one purpose of security is the number one thing that appears to rarely work on here: Deterrence. Law enforcement is primarily response based. Something happens and law enforcement take action to apprehend the suspect and assist the victim. Security services are primarily prevention. The idea is to make sure nobody becomes a suspect of a crime nor a victim of one. The presence of a security is supposed to make the cost of certain illegal actions outweigh the benefit of doing said actions, that being fighting, vandalism, theft, murder, etcetera. This does not work when the security is not taken seriously. Why security is not taken seriously? Because people either outgun the security services and know it, are able to outclick them in a fight or disregard them completely because they're not part of a law enforcement faction. Even in this very topic, in the streamable linked before, you can see this; The person that made the streamable decided to attack another person with a deadly weapon right in front of 2 security officers while already having their attention, with another 3-4 security officers within sight. The "magdump" from the security officer that opened fire first appears to be the most realistic thing in the entire situation, because it takes a lot of training in situations like this to not keep pulling the trigger (refer to a whole load of police related shootings in the US where a large quantity if pistol ammunition is used). So what's the response? Up-arming and armouring the security services. If people don't take the friendly-but-firm security officer seriously, perhaps they take the friendly-armed-and-armoured security officer seriously when they get confronted with the fact they have a gun and is wearing a vest. Because doing that is the language people appear to speak, seeing it in front of their noses. Especially when the friendly-armed-and-armoured security officer has to become the not-so-friendly-armed-and-armoured security officer. And this is not an unrealistic development either. Securitas, one of if not the biggest private security companies in the world, has their employees in the United States go out in overt vests and openly carrying firearms while doing their regular patrol rounds, depending on the state. The vest is useful because of the amount of stuff it allows you to carry around while being protected from certain threats, the cargo pants someone commented on earlier serve a similar purpose. No security company on this server rolls around in MRAPs, no security company flies Little Birds while having people hanging onto the sides, no security companies walk around with assault rifles. So I'd highly recommend the people accusing the security companies on this server of acting like private military companies to reconsider their definition of PMCs, as it's so far rather baseless. People appear to have the expectation that a security guard should be someone in a black shirt with "SECURITY" stamped on it and that being that. And being that in this video game is pretty much career suicide; you won't be able to handle any situation unless you severely outnumber whoever is causing a ruckus, your boss will wonder what you're being paid for and either no longer hires your company or you. The security sphere on this server is the result of people's actions surrounding and interacting with said security. The answer is the current status-quo.

Stop supporting him turning this into a TV show! He already talks about "cast" and "episodes" and "seasons".

In real life, I usually go over the limit as well, conditions allowing for it. Exception being residential neighbourhoods, if the posted speed is 50 km/h I usually do 55. On the highway they recently changed it so 100 km/h is the limit during the day but I usually still do 110 or 120 (partially because I still don't agree with the change but that's fine). In game, I actually use the speed limiter as my character would only go slightly over the speed limit when conditions allow, if at all. Discovering /sp was a thing really made it easier to not speed recklessly and not having to constantly tap W which was a nuisance. Promoting the use of /sp (or having /sp standard on vehicles and making someone have to do /sp off to get rid of it) might be an idea that would squash some speeding? But otherwise, speed cameras might also help because then people feel it in their virtual wallets.

I understand what you're saying. However, very few breakins happen Splinter Cell style without any traces being left. Furthermore, if the players doing the breakin were sophisticated enough to leave no traces, the admin can make a note about that. If the note says that no traces on the exterior would be found, metagaming reports are clearly in order if someone decides to press the issue further without a good reason.

Short description: Allow a player to check with a new command /breakincheck whether a property has actually been broken in to, instead of guessing whether it was or whether the door was accidentally left unlocked. Allow the admin spectating the breakin to set a note through /breakinnote about what was broken to gain entrance. Detailed description: Currently, there's no way to figure out whether an unlocked door on a property was a result of a bug/crash on the server's part, whether the owner or a tenant forgot to lock it, or whether the door has been blasted off its hinges. Only the owner gets informed their property was broken in to, but I've been told that's as descriptive as it gets. The suggestion therefore is that the admin supervising the /breakin request can make a note to specify how the burglars gained entrance. And anyone can at the entrance of the property interact through /breakincheck, seeing the description the admin put in about the door being forced by a crowbar, the window being thrown in with a brick, etcetera. Commands to add: /breakincheck (or equivalent) /breakinnote (or equivalent for the admin to make a note about the entry) Items to add: N/A How would your suggestion improve the server? Currently, for every property we secure at Gruppe Sechs where we find a door opened when checking, we basically roll a dice; either the owner left it open on aiccdent, the server caused it to be open, it got broken in to. We /report to ask whether any record exists about the breakins and while we sometimes get told a definitive no, often the administration will reply with a "we don't know". This often results in us having to file it under accidentally unlocked, even though someone might have taken a sledgehammer to the door not 30 minutes ago and made off with a bunch of loot. Through the introduction of this system, security companies can go about their roleplay without having to bother the administration, who I am sure have a lot better things to do than check whenever we stand at a door. And we no longer have to wait around after /report until an admin has the time to take a look at the matter. It thus allows us to roleplay the consequences of an admin-consented roleplay scene, without having to drag the admin back into it. Furthermore, it allows more roleplay for people who RP in a close knit community, because they now have the ability to check up on each other's houses. Or at least check when something appears off. Additional information: