Shah of Persia

gagman clem suspended for misconduct!!

OP updated.

I get your point. I'm just saying, and what I mean by 'strawman', is that harsher punishments for certain offenses doesn't neccesarily mean that model roleplayers get punished too harshly. The argument disqualifies the solution as if it's a bad thing, when it's not, because it instigates fear of being too hard and punishing differently (and in some instances harder) leads to the situation we're in right now. You can write rough guidelines to gauge intent and measure attitude to come to a fair conclusion that's in the benefit of the server and its players. Are you out to start shit and grief RP? Get out. Are you going to argue and are you unwilling to see it from both sides? You disqualify yourself. 'Fair' doesn't mean that everybody's always happy or gets their sweet revenge. But it just feels bittersweet when somebody scores bad on the former and then just gets away with a warning. It's a useless conclusion, because the reported party feels no remorse, doesn't feel they're in the wrong and while they might not grief an interior again, they're going to carry that same shitty attitude into other roleplay situations. It's more the intent with which some players roleplay that renders a lot of interactions toxic, and it goes unpunished. The sad reality is that I have never heard anybody speak positively about the vibe in the illegal scene for instance, and this was 100% different on other servers I have played at. I don't know how to add anything constructive to this discussion anymore because I don't know these admin handbooks and guidelines people talk about, so I'm going to stop here. I just want to add that if these guidelines is what Wuhtah followed in the OP something is off and is restricting her. At the same time if you say 5 admins come to such different conclusions, then what do these handbooks and guidelines do? And don't forget that rules and enforcing rules is just an instrument to achieve and maintain some kind of vision on what entails good roleplay and what is desirable. What I and Frezemis understand under "standards" might be two completely different things, so you have to formulate a central vision and curate it as the server develops and you gain new insights as a staff team.

To be fair you're all drawing a strawman argument here. The issue doesn't lie with punishment of people that make small mistakes and the punishment being too proportional. The issue lies with people who actively grief other people's roleplay, have an attitude and go on to lie when malicious intent is super obvious. It's all about intent here. The report in OP is a clear example of that. Jamal jeopardizes other people's roleplay and efforts. It's not fun, and deleting somebody else's hard work in-game was never going to be a fun roleplay experience for the victimizing party. You can't make me believe that Jamal thought people were going to have a good time! Nothing could come of it but hostilities. Especially considering the victims were civilians that would never go so far as to use any form of violence to retaliate. It's almost unfair. I feel so gutted for the mapper cause he's such a nice person OOC, and I feel like the reporting party just got trampled here in their efforts to just have a good time. It's demotivating as hell.

I haven't been around on this server for so long so take what I say with a grain of salt. In all fairness you didn't make it look like you were biased at all. You took your time to listen to both parties and also went ahead to check logs and whatnot. To me it's mostly about a player's intent. People can break rules, sure, and they can come to regret it or genuinely misunderstood or having been unaware of a rule. I saw a report once where a bunch of people I was around got reported for breaking robbery rules but they made it pretty obvious they weren't aware how detailed searching a player during a robbery had to be and thought a few short emotes would suffice. A simple explenation with context would have done the job here, and I understand it is enough to warn a player and void the roleplay, which was the case. But in this instance the reported player clearly had malicious intent. No matter how you take it, it could never have resulted in 'fun' roleplay for both parties involved, even if the player took the time to write more emotes. The intent was to damage / grief another player because they were angry about something out-of-character, which is a recipe for disaster. The reported player went on to show not an ounce of regret about what they had done, which is more an ego problem. What I honestly think staff should do more in these situations is encourage players more to have both parties empathize with each other and learn from the situation and if both parties are willing to see both sides of the story the punishment can be more lenient. Maybe the conclusion with a warning would then actually have felt more satisfying for the reporting party too because it'd feel like progress was made and their point was brought across. Perhaps it would have lead to an apology, too? But I understand handling a report like this takes even more time. The way reports are dealt with now just seems to me like it sometimes breeds a bad server culture. Punishment shouldn't be a goal in and of itself because players will still just split with grievances. e: this is not a criticism directed at you personally also because you're one of the admins that have come across to me as professional. not saying that to suck up.

Yes please. I love the visual effects. They go too fast. At least make it last longer, like two hours. Maybe allow people to turn it off for accessibility if they become seasick 😛

RP isn't a vehicle simulator.

Ah the classic realism argument. My theory has always been there's a difference between 'realism' and 'believable'. Roleplay isn't a life (or whatever) simulator. It's a genre where the focus is on telling a captivating story on the go. And the theme in GTA is that it should be contemporary and convincing fiction. Realism is something that can never be achieved and also has its downsides. It's a fine balance. Yeah, I get your point. Rare cars should be roleplayed as rare. But in a roleplay server excentric and rare characters are always going to be more common than in real-life, depending on what draws you, and that should be tolerated. I think curating what concepts people should be able to roleplay or how many people should roleplay it is dumb. People should first and foremost have the freedom to tell their character's story regardless of concept, and regardless of whether somebody else finds it appealing or not. Cars and houses in that are just cosmetic. They help to portray your character just like /examine. Don't overvalue it. I don't think it's really a problem if far too many people roleplay rich characters, just like I don't think it's an issue many people choose to roleplay criminals. It doesn't degrade roleplay quality as long as they do it right. Maybe it's not desirable. But curating how many people can roleplay a certain concept just limits other players who are very enthusiastic about doing something from doing just that, and I think that's more of a concern for a roleplay server: that you don't have the freedom to roleplay something that is perfectly valid. If it's unbalanced focus on stimulating other avenues of roleplay rather than adding a quotum for the amount of rare cars. Plus you're making cars artificially rare and desired by limiting access out of character and making them exceptionally expensive. If you could just spawn a fast car for $1 they wouldn't be as desirable for a certain (and maybe the wrong) group of people. I don't understand why people give a fuck about what assets somebody's character cosmetically owns. They're just cosmetic, after all. And half the time the people complaining about it aren't even the ones that are actively involved with people's roleplay. So the people in here complaining shouldn't be complaining in the first place. It's like somebody is standing on the street, sees somebody drive by in some sportscar, and they think "grrr another one of those!". When you literally have no clue what these people roleplay and whether the reason they have the asset is valid. Let alone whether you agree with the reasoning or not. It's gatekeeping other people's roleplay, and it's dumb, because you're in no position to. It's a problem with people having stupid associations, not the people driving uncommon cars. We have rules that describe what sort of roleplay is allowed or isn't and there's always going to be rulebreakers or people who deviate too far from the median or don't feel comfortable in your concept. But the amount of 'unordinary' cars people drive is not a problem and not something I think staff should waste their time on, which is what was meant when said "there being far bigger problems". Stop gatekeeping people's roleplay. It's none of your business. Driving cars is also not roleplay so I don't understand how driving fast (which is not unique to high performance cars) or the distribution of uncommon cars among players could lower the quality of roleplay at all. It's bad associations again, that people who own uncommon cars drive fast and can't roleplay, and that out of this fear (which is not a statistical fact nor something that could be investigated in such a way) certain roleplay or assets should be restricted. I.e. people who can do this perfectly fine and in their concept see such a thing as necessary are restricted from roleplaying such a concept because you're only focused on the people that abuse it / don't do it right. I think this topic and concern is also a massive waste of time because people were complaining about non-rp driving in 2012 and it's just a fact of life. Focus staff efforts on stimulating different kinds of RP and facilitating players rather than coming up with more rules and policies that restrict the roleplay that is currently going on and in the future.

I literally have 0 issues identifying (M) and using /examine to figure out if somebody is 14 or 17. Don't get the hate against (M) either. Not everybody that is (M) is a 12 year old ruthless gangbanger. Sounds like you all need to expand your crowd. To me it's fun to roleplay a coming of age story and a nice deterent from getting every dude asking for your number when you walk into a place. It's fun to go back to the years where you didn't really give a fuck about anything. People are bad at roleplaying a lot of shit not just (M) so I don't see why this should be further restricted. I'm minding my business though.

And this shouldn't be the same for somebody racing around town in a Sultan or? Literally what does it matter what car somebody drives despite people being somehow envious of what car somebody drives xddd I don't get it.

Elaborate?

Yes! I think staff involvement should just be to help people fast track interesting concepts that they don't have script money for.

1. What entails good and fun roleplay varies from player to player. As long as people follow the rules it should be tolerated. Just because on the surface a character seems poorly portrayed doesn't mean that they're actually bad roleplayers. What car somebody drives is no indicator of "skill". 2. People can still drive sportscars and drive fast because they're available in the server-owned dealerships. So I don't see what difference it makes if it's a car that was made artificially exclusive by staff rather than any other car. I don't see how making cars exclusive is a solution for apparent non-rp driving. Not to mention I don't see how it affects your roleplay directly or indirectly.

Also against restricting vehicle ownership. Cars are nothing more than a tool, like clothing, to help people portray a character. And it is up to them whether they see fit for it. "Mallrats" have never hurt anyone. Make it so these vehicles can only be sold by player owned dealerships, and curate these businesses on whether they create good roleplay. Let them pay to import the car and sell the vehicle with some margin. Limit how many of these cars can be on the server to create some artificial rarity and make them fall under the property inactivity rule. Make people pay for insurance and maintenance of these vehicles so it's not just a one-time investment. Or for all I care let everybody spawn any car with a trainer if it helps create RP!

100% agree. People look for reasons to use their guns all the time and it's not fun roleplay to be the victim. It's just a waste of time. It's mostly a cultural thing too that from my perception and brief stay on this server seems to be widely accepted. e: I think your suggestion cq. getting a definition of what exactly is considered poor escalation makes it easier to enforce for admins, easier for victims to ring the bell and easier to reflect on your own roleplay and whether you're doing that when walking into a grey-area situation. It's genuinely helpful.

Like I said there's 320 million people living in the US in 2022 and the vast majority are just people who go to fucking work in the morning and pay their taxes. Just because you and others decide to roleplay the niche of the ruthless retard that pops up on worldstar doesn't mean that this should be the norm of roleplay. It's uninteresting and uncreative. There's a shit ton of ways you can roleplay a character that is up to no good without being the guy that has no fear or remorse. It's just surprising to me so few people seem to choose that path. There's rules to restrict you from roleplaying that shit character background or not so the game remains fair and fun. Nobody's saying that you HAVE to roleplay some psychological process visually when the realization hits you that you killed someone, but most of the time these exceptionally remorseless murderers you're referring to have a reason they are the way they are. And I just know that the vast majority of people didn't actually go through roleplaying that background or is actively portraying that environment as we speak. If you think you do, good for you. But very few people are justified in this type of 'poor escalation' and safe to say it shouldn't be allowed.

Bro nobody cares about shitty criminal development arcs. Stop talking about depth like you're doing something unique. You literally sound like you've been roleplaying what everybody else has been roleplaying for the past ten years. And it's uninteresting and unengaging. There's literally rules in place so not every well-intentioned human that didn't choose the traumatized, unforgiving and relentless development arc for their character has to be subject to your gangster fantasy. There's 329 million people living in the United States. Get creative.

Sorry what??

Yeah tbf all the time these discussions are like a lame excuse to just roleplay a shitty gangster which is literally why rules like these are in place.