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True, but that's a different problem. In my opinion, it shouldn't be addressed by allowing people to break the server rules. The problem is that the whole concept of 'advertising' in this case is a blatant case of mixing IC with OOC which more than that has no connection to any character or their backgrounds.

Whether this is a pet peeve of mine or a blatant breach of the metagaming/mixing rule, I don't believe it's something that should be allowed on the server. I'm seeing this come up in conversations and adverts quite often and it makes zero sense on an in-character level. For those who are not familiar, in order to literally put your business on the map you need an active gold or platinum donator status. Since lots of people own businesses but do not have one, they resort to hiring 'advertisers' - advertising IC jobs for OOC gold and platinum donators. It's also a common thing to ask whether said person has an 'active gold or platinum advertiser card or membership'. I've never seen administrators refer to this which I believe to be an issue, nor ever seen it mentioned anywhere as a breach of any rule. I think it is something that should be looked into, added to the rules and enforced from now on. Moreover, most of the characters filling these 'advertiser' roles have no IC background, story or development in these fields. They're street racers, truckers, car flippers, even gang members and such. While I do agree that you should be able to make use of someone's OOC /blip and /bad access since not everyone is able to afford buying a subscription, it should be an entirely OOC thing. It should have no connection whatsoever to our characters or to the GTA World lore. It shouldn't be advertised or brought up in conversations. What do you think?

-double post-

This is what I based my argument on - Nervous said it himself in a thread somewhere. Either way, this doesn't matter as much. What matters is the balance which would be lost by having drugs and money leave the server. Even if the circuit is not closed, we should aim to close it as much as possible. Bottom line is that the more ways that money is injected and extracted from the economy, the more unstable it'll be.

I'd love to see this but please keep the compass. It's extremely useful for some of us. Maybe make it togglable but don't get rid of it entirely.

To my understanding, the administration is aiming towards having an economy that's as closed as possible with as little (ideally, no) money coming from the script. The idea is to create an artificial ecosystem where each dollar has a certain velocity which can, in one way or another, be measured or at least approximated. That's the only way in which a realistic economy could exist on the server. Making items disappear into the void and random amounts of money be spawned into the server will never happen, 100%. It would be a huge setback and something which would make the goal described above completely impossible to ever achieve. This would, in turn, create other imbalances in the economy and would do a lot of harm in the long run. Just imagine it like this - there's a set amount of water on Earth. This water goes through a cycle: it freezes or it evaporates from lakes, turns into clouds, it rains down somewhere else on earth. What would happen if somehow, the total amount of water kept increasing and decreasing? Nothing good. It's the same situation in an economy, especially an artificially generated one like the GTA World one. It doesn't really happen in real life - if something similar happens, it leads to other effects which can have huge impacts (inflation, for example). There has to be a perfect balance in a market that's as close to being closed as possible. It's not perfect right now but the current system is much more advance than that of any other GTA role-play server that ever existed, especially on such a large scale. Besides the very important reason mentioned above, this would just be a way for people to skip of the risky part of illegal roleplay, that of getting scammed or shot. Selling drugs, weapons and other illegal items is extremely hard and risky due to the huge amount of volatile factors that come into play. Being able to sell drugs (and weapons and whatnot) to the script would just completely eliminate the risk.

I have personally wanted to do something about this and have spent lots of my on-duty time patrolling through the county in the last three months. There's a lot of people complaining about the amount of robberies that go down in the county but I personally, in the 300 hours I have spent online, have never stumbled upon or responded to an active robbery call. There have been around 5 or 6 calls regarding robberies that have already happened and more often than not, the only thing you can do is get a statement and again, more often than not, that statement is something like "an unknown black car pulled up and a fully masked guy robbed me and left" - nothing to go on. Lots of SD people would prefer role-playing in the county, myself included, but only if there was something going on. Everyone's looking for action and it's normal - I'm not talking about shootouts and pursuits but rather getting involved in some role-playing scenarios, whatever they might be. Due to the low population and large size, however, there aren't lots of role-play opportunities for on-duty LEO characters in the county which is why most choose the city. The IC means are there for these alleged excessive robberies to be stopped, but whoever is experiencing this and would like to see a change has to actually use them and combat the issue on an IC level. It's not something that can be fixed OOCly and it's not something that can be fixed through a forum discussion.

Taxes being controlled by the government. A tax should only be imposed following an in depth documentation and debates inside the legislative bodies and they should have a purpose. Taxes shouldn't be added for OOC reasons by rather to solve IC problems or complement the government's quarterly budgets and increase expenditure. They should also be able to raise or lower taxes, according to the city's agenda and plans. This would also trigger some interesting political role-play.

Yeah, but the problem would persist. Adding taxes would not change anything in terms of profit. The taxes would just be moved onto the buyers. People would still flip vehicles, would still make as much money (if not more) and charge more for the vehicles. Instead of $80,000, they'll sell vehicles for $90,000 and have the tax covered. It's exactly what happened before, with the 5% tax.

The only thing an increased tax would do is make vehicles more expensive. The initial 5% tax only did one thing - made vehicles more expensive. The dealers still make as much money they used to, the 5% tax was just moved onto the customers. If a $100,000 vehicle was bought for $85,000 and sold for $90,000 before, giving the dealer a $5,000 profit margin, the 5% tax ($4,500) basically removed their profit entirely. The effect? Most (if not all) used car dealerships now sell vehicles for brand new price (or close to it). The dealer is making the same (if not even more money) and you, as a customer, pay for the vehicle + their 5% tax. Increase the tax? We'll be paying even more for each vehicle. I personally don't engage in flipping cars and don't particularly like the role-play and development that surrounds most of these characters. I haven't seen many dealerships though and only one impressed me - the one in Sandy Shores. I'd like to see something changed and especially something to stop mobile phone dealers which I see as highly unrealistic and play-to-win characters but more taxes won't fix anything, unfortunately.

I'm totally against this. It's the same thing which happened to the vehicle tax which, in my opinion, did not work as it should have. The effect of adding these types of taxes is that the only person who is actually affected by them is the customer - the seller moves the tax onto the customer. When the 5% tax was added on vehicle sales, vehicle dealerships drastically increased the prices of the vehicles in order to get a profit. The 5% sale basically cancelled their profits. A clear example. Before, they were able to buy a vehicle (brand new price $100,000) for $85,000 and sell it for $90,000 and make a reasonable $5,000 profit. After? Selling the vehicle for $90,000 meant a $4,500 tax. Posting two ads to advertise the business and the profit is 0. This caused most if not all of the vehicle dealerships to sell their vehicles at brand new price, which is what happens right now. Adding a tax did not fix anything. Vehicle dealerships are still making plenty of money and the only people who suffered from these changes were the customers. The same would happen to a house and again, it would fix nothing. Let's say the market price is $100,000 and the tax is 20%. If the person would've put $80,000 into furnishing and sold the house for $200,000, that would mean $20,000 profit for them but with the 20% tax, they'll just sell it for more, so that the price includes the market price, furniture price, tax and profit. The only thing this will do is again, move the tax onto the customers. I'm fully against this.

That wouldn't work. If characters under a certain age were able to do low and medium level crime with no repercussions, there'd be a high increase in underage illegal characters who would take advantage of this. There's already lots of improper illegal role-play, a spike in it would only do more harm.

Short description: Buttons placed to the left and right of the menu sliders in order to navigate through them one by one. Detailed description: The mechanic garage menus or the character selection menus are great additions, but it can be hard to go through and see each of the items individually by moving the slider with your mouse. I've personally noticed this when trying to choose a different type of wheels. Adding buttons to the left and right of the slider in order to slowly and incrementally go through the list would be a great feature, in my opinion. Commands to add: N/A Items to add: N/A How would your suggestion improve the server? Ease of use. Additional information: N/A.

Short description: A new menu for clothing stores. Detailed description: It's quite hard to create an outfit by going through the items one by one, considering there's over a thousand of them in total. It'd be nice to have a menu similar to the character creation one or the mechanic garage one in place, thus making creating an outfit an easier and faster task. Commands to add: N/A Items to add: N/A How would your suggestion improve the server? Quality of life. Additional information: N/A

Short description: If you use /acceptdeath, you should respawn at one of your properties instead of the hospital. Detailed description: I never really understood the connection between dying and waking up in a hospital. If a character dies, everything that happened leading to his death is erased from their memory, thus it makes no sense on an IC level for them to wake up at the hospital. Commands to add: N/A Items to add: N/A How would your suggestion improve the server? Quality of life. Additional information: Once you /acceptdeath, you'll be shown the spawn selection menu, the one that shows when you join the game.

I can't see the connection between PKs and role-playing injuries, or how more PKs means you should be CKed. PK means that your character died. Everything related to said incident is erased from their past and memory. You can only role-play wounds if your character was taken to a hospital. If he was riddled with bullets, you can't role-play your stomach hurting from the wounds or using a cane to walk around because that character had died in that incident. If anything, that's metagaming. On the other hand, dying lots of times does not mean you should be CKed either. There's people who role-play around firearms a lot and die a lot, that's because of the fast pace of the game compared to real life. There's people role-playing in LEO factions and some of them die quite often, that doesn't mean they should CK because of it. I think the system is fine as it is right now. If you want to CK someone and the application was accepted, an administrator will most definitely handle the CK request in-game once it is performed, there's no need for it to be automatic.

I'm sure there's people out there who properly role-play the effect alcohol or drugs has on their characters, I don't doubt that but it's a fact that they are rare. I, as well as many if not most people who role-play in law enforcement have either never or rarely seen someone properly role-play it. I'm not saying there's only one person every week, I'm saying that, in my case anyway, in the hundreds of traffic stops I've performed in the last three months, there wasn't a single person to role-play being under some sort of influence, not even a single one. That's the problem. There's definitely exceptions to the rule. Some people have an extremely high tolerance to alcohol, others only took a small sip but again these are exceptions. The average Joe drinks two beers and has a normal alcohol tolerance, something can be noticed. We can't suggest rules based off exceptions or most characters would instantly become exceptions. This is no different than the ankle monitor script - can you role-play hiding it with some baggy pants? Sure, but it still exists in /ex. Same with the beanbag and taser scripts, they force you into an animation although you can role-play the pins not connecting. Same with the alcohol script, actually - it already forces you into the animation on your screen and decreases your HP, regardless of how your character responds to alcohol. That is what happens in general. After all, it's your choice how you want to role-play the effect. What's important is for a base to be there, for others to be able to tell too. The script would only say "-> Visual signs of impairment". Whether that means your character is flat out drunk and blacked out, their breath smells a bit like alcohol or they're acting a bit funky after smoking some weed, that's your choice but it's highly unlikely that using some sort of stimulant like alcohol or drugs would have literally no effect on a character, not even something subtle. No one would force anyone to roleplay specific effects, but rather state that something is noticeable and leave it up to you how to continue with it. Yeah, the breathalyzer script exists and is good enough but again, you'd need to have some sort of reason in order to use it on people. If you can see someone zoning in and out or smell alcohol coming from them, you'd use it. If you stop someone who just role-played drinking 10 bottles of whiskey and they don't mention anything, there's no IC reason for your character to use it. As far as I know, only traffic units are equipped with kits that test for the alcohol level anyway so that's not feasible. I don't know for sure because I've never been in the situation to use one. But again, the problem's not with people who properly role-play it, albeit there's few of them, but the others who don't. This would not change anything nor force you into role-playing specific effects, but rather state that there's some sort of effects visible for a while after consuming alcohol or drugs. It's still up to everyone to role-play the effects however they'd like.

That's the problem. Xanx's MDC Panel has been discontinued (it's been deleted from github), besides the fact that it only has 3 or 4 functions, nothing unit-specific, PD/SD only. BBCode.rip is good but again, it's not official and it's very limited (it's very hard to fill in more complex forms - like SD's incident reports, for example). The problem with them not being 'official' is that they can go down at any point in time and we'll be left with nothing. I experienced this a week or so ago when I wanted to use one of the many tools we have and the website didn't work anymore. This can happen to all of them. I believe we're at the point in time where a separate, official tool could be very useful.

tl;dr An official .gta.world tool for all factions to use in order to generate I posted this on the SD forums but was directed to post it here, since it's more of an official, server-wide project than a faction-specific one. I and many others would like to see some sort of official website or hub to aid us with filing the paperwork required by most (if not all) of the legal factions. Each of these factions has some sort of administrative forum work, some more than others, that we're all required to do in order to keep everything organized and up-and-running and it would be nice to have an official and dynamic system in place. This is why I believe this to not only be extremely relevant and important but also urgent. I have put together a sketch of what the website could look like. I think that an experienced web developer (and we have a bunch) can do this in a short matter of time. It doesn't have to be anything fancy as it can be updated regularly, in time. The system would be similar to the MDC. A simple, straight-forward explanation of the functionality: User enters their badge number and UCP password, then they're taken to their faction's page. If they're in multiple factions, to a screen where they can choose. On their faction's page, they select the category/division and are taken to the relevant forms. They select one of them, fill in the form and generate the either the BBCode or HTML (for the MDC) - something set by the form's creator. They then post it on the forum or on the MDC. We currently have some tools but none of them are official. One which was has been discontinued, as far as I know, and was seriously lacking (only ~3-4 functions). For SD only, there's a ton of different unofficial websites and tools made by kind people but it's hard to keep track, neither of them are official and if something happens and they go down, we're left to filling the BBCode or HTML in ourselves (in some cases it's fine but in others, trust me, it's not). The tool would be dynamic. Forms will be added, removed and modified directly by the factions themselves, without needing a web developer to do so (like our current versions). There would be 3 roles. User (default), moderator (can add divisions and forms within those divisions - supervisors within each faction) and administrators (faction leaders, staff members - they add the moderators and can see everything). The website would save the form's contents (to prevent accidentally closing the browser and losing everything) and the only way to clear it would be by clicking the 'Clear' button. It would automatically-fill the static details (Name, Badge number, date and time etc.). Why? Besides the reasons above, which are current and urgent, we have to look towards the future. The server was almost empty, undeveloped and sometimes unplayable a few years ago. Right now, there's 780 players online at the same time. Factions are numerous, developing and branching out continuously. This tool will not only be useful now but will adapt together with the server. Otherwise we'll (inevitably) reach a point when it will be overwhelming to keep track of everything. How? The tool would work similar to BBCode.rip (for who is familiar). The moderator posts the BBCode, links the form's fields to their place in the BBCode and that's how it would be filled. That also makes it dynamic (since different forums use different codes and such) and it's also fairly easy. For the HTML formats, it would work just like the MDC panel. Some screens I made on the go. Please don't bash my clear lack of talent.

That would be the best option, but it doesn't work right now. I'm speaking from experience. My character has been in SD for two months and something and in almost three hundred hours, I've never seen anyone portray an impaired person, not on-duty nor off-duty. People should be role-playing it on their own but they're not and there isn't much to do about it. I don't think it's an RPG element though. It's exactly the same situation as the ankle monitors. There's a reason why they're listed in /examine instead of letting people role-play it on their own accords - because this freedom can be and is easily and heavily abused.

Short description: An automatic reminder 30 seconds after receiving damage. Detailed description: /setinjuries is an extremely powerful tool but lots of people don't use it. Some don't even know it exists. It would be nice for a reminder to be sent in the chat to use /setinjuries. This would happen around 30 seconds after your HP was last modified (so if you're in a fight or shootout it doesn't spam you, but rather send it after it's over). This is extremely useful on scenes which involve a lot of people and prevents people from spamming the chat, asking what injuries can be seen on X and Y's bodies. Commands to add: N/A Items to add: N/A How would your suggestion improve the server? Clearing up some confusion and clutter, better organization during certain situations. Additional information: N/A

Short description: When using drugs or alcohol, having a new line automatically added in /attributes for a short amount of time in order to specify "visible signs of impairment". Detailed description: There's no way to tell whether someone used drugs or alcohol at the moment. If you do it, you have some sort of effect on your screen but others can not see it nor be aware of it. Lots of people do not RP these effects and there's no way to tell whether someone did drugs or alcohol or not. In my almost 300 hours on my SD character, I have never seen it happen. The attributes line would also disappear after 30 minutes or 1 hour. Commands to add: N/A Items to add: N/A How would your suggestion improve the server? Other people will be aware of whether someone's visibly impaired or not. Additional information: The attribute would work like the one which states you have an ankle monitor attached. It would disappear after a set amount of time.

I'd like to see this.

I didn't try it but I believe that you can do both at the same time, get into the animation and then use /camera. Not 100% sure though.

Super wholesome. Definitely!