Lloydski

Username: tendollarscholar Comment: Thanks, Obama.

I've always wanted a faction like SAAA because I'd like air roleplay to be a more common thing. However, the issue I see with it is that it would require an overhaul of pilot licensing to do properly I think. For example, the image below is an approach plate for LAX (Los Angeles Intl) which is essentially what the controller was asking the pilot of the helicopter to do when he said 'standard procedure'. If there's going to be an active ATC faction these things need to be taught to pilots so that they can communicate with them properly. For example, in standard flight in the real world - whatever the ATC says goes. Period. There's no argument, but if there's an issue you raise it on the ground. I fully support giving them authority over the air and all aviation-related roleplay, as long as these standards are widely published and pilots are taught them and not just expected to know it.

Hi, I run MRCAD (Media Relations & Community Affairs Division) who are the guys you see interacting with the community in polo shirts, or possibly even wearing shorts and riding bicycles like suggested in this thread. Vespucci Beach is an area of interest for us because part of our roleplay is emulating the 'beach cops' and 'bike cops' you see. As with everything on the server, however, we have to balance what we do with the number of people we have and the number of people who are roleplaying in said area. Vespucci is definitely a hot area, but the beach isn't always being used and as such we don't have a dedicated 'Beach Patrol', simply the option for our Community Relations Officers to patrol it using a variety of methods ranging from foot to a pickup truck to navigate the sand. We're always looking for feedback, however, so if you do feel that the Vespucci Beach area is being neglected and could use some improvement I'm more than happy to take specific suggestions for improvement via PMs so that I can make sure we follow up on them. I like the idea of using the small station there as a mini-base for our beach officers, however, we've also got to justify the amount of work that will go into creating it with how much it'll realistically be used. Nevertheless I'm going to put it on the agenda for our division to discuss and possibly push up the chain to our faction leadership if we think we could justify it.

USERNAME: RIDINWITHBIDEN MESSAGE: I smell a commie.

USERNAME: RIDINWITHBIDEN MESSAGE: Another datawars wannabe? No thanks.

Any American appreciation thread is actually just a French appreciation thread ?

I'd like to jump in on the Community Events bit for a second, seeing as that's my thing. We do our absolute best to host events - but there are a lot of limitations that we, unfortunately, have to deal with. I'll try and give a brief list: Available officers - it's particularly hard to predict what server pop will be like and what crime rates will be like on any given night, and due to us being a police department of around 130ish officers who aren't always on at the same time this can cause a real impact. We have a whole system where anyone can request LSPD presence or participation in events that you can see on our forums here. A department like the LAPD has dedicated units for each, but for our community relations units, we're all basic units first which means if there are emergencies and a lack of officers, we go. Game limitations - Part of running events is trying to immerse those present in the atmosphere. It's extremely hard to do this with pure text-based roleplay, which is why the script supports things such as roadblocks, exterior furniture etc. These script-based things are limited though, and with server crashes being an ever-present threat, events that rely on these things can sometimes turn into a chore as everything gets reset. Lack of Interest - we try to portray a police department to the best of our abilities and sometimes that means doing events, such as our community meetings, that some people thoroughly enjoy and others don't even want to touch. It's hard for us to gauge interest and we've had events go both ways where more or less have turned up that expected. Because of this, we try to focus on events that people will enjoy roleplaying in. So, what are we doing to get around this? We actively encourage community members to submit event requests to us. We have a whole system on our forums where anyone can request police presence or participation in events being run by the community. You can find that system here. We are trying to build relationships with factions in the server in the hopes that joint events will become more commonplace. A great example of this is the faction R-Motorsport, who we've been working with since last year to create an enjoyable and legal racing environment for players. You can see examples of their events such as last month's Paleto Forest Rally here. Whilst we do our best to seek out new opportunities with businesses and factions, we're not omniscient. We rely on others sending us suggestions, requests, propositions that we may not have considered. The only way we improve is with work from both sides and I welcome any and all help from this community. In summary, community relations roleplay is often criticised heavily yet in my experiences a lot of those most vocal about condemning us for it don't actually wish to take part in such roleplay. We're doing our best and we will make mistakes along the way, but the majority of that will be an IC issue (see this latest racing incident). But please don't ever feel afraid to contact the Media Relations & Community Affairs Division if you think that you can help us create events or improve community relations roleplay for everyone.

Username: BigT Comment: This was obviously staged to distract us from Carole Baskin's investigation.

This issue should be clearly split into IC and OOC sections because there's currently a blur in this thread that I think needs to be addressed. I'll break that down here, starting with the OOC. As an LEO roleplayer, I'd be more inclined to leniency to a minor character if: The minor's 'family' (ie home) wasn't NPC'd and they actually had player parents. There was an actual social services (or whatever the US use) faction/system on the server, ran by a non-police entity that managed minors. The characters didn't switch from untouchable gang member to scared/underage/pregnant when they get caught. Now for the IC section, and this is important. Currently, and I say this because I have actually done it before, if you were to take someone home with a warning then the majority of the time they're going to be back out on the street in 5 minutes with their friends again. Whilst this is admittedly in part an OOC issue as listed above, we have to consider the IC circumstances - for example, their parents don't care so just let them back out. If officers see this as a trend, they're naturally going to choose to NOT do that because there's no effect. As a disclaimer, this isn't aimed at any player or group in particular but is a consensus I've drawn based on trends and situations I've seen or read about.

Okay, I was hoping to actually get some insight into what people outside the LSPD faction thought on this, but it seems you're simply very upset and looking for an outlet. I'll excuse myself here.

Just to clarify, because I'm getting mixed signals here - you've complained that we don't roleplay fear in 'the hood', but you've also complained when we turn up to basic situations in said hood with a high number of units for officer safety. What's your stance on this?

Based on the behaviour I've seen from my side (looting bodies for weapons and other stuff like this is a battle royale game), I think giving blanket access to police vehicles would be a step in the wrong direction. Also, with the roleplaying of locking/unlocking - I believe there's an automatic /ame that happens when you do this which covers it? Admin supervised actions generally work well, a case in point was the vehicle torchings that happened last year - it kept us on our toes and reminded us that it was a hostile neighbourhood as well as adding a sense of urgency and danger to the area which I thoroughly enjoyed. If stealing from police vehicles was to be considered, then I'd strongly suggest this be the minimum requirement because I worry that free-reign would encourage an almost unrealistic 'destroy the evidence' gamemode attitude.

A tipline could be good, however, forcing the LSPD to "investigate with or without evidence" is questionable. It should be up to the LSPD whether to follow up any reports made based on the information and/or evidence given. This is ultimately a question for LSPD leadership such as @Big_Smokes.

Unfortunately, let's say this escalates to a '/me reaches for his pistol, raising it up toward the officers'. The player then immediately opens fire and due to vehicle sync and general rage mp, we don't see who is shooting only bullets coming into officers. There is no time here to stop and ask who is doing what. I'd love it if everyone was willing to wait for /do clarifications, but this is rarely the case in high-intensity situations. So I'd argue no, not problem solved - simply problem expanded.

I'm late to the party, but the only issue I've encountered so far with this is identifying who is taking actions whilst inside of a vehicle. Let's say there are 4 people in the vehicle that we've pulled over and one of the passengers emotes reaching for something. I have no way of identifying who is doing that. I know someone is doing it because I can "see" them doing it, but I can't articulate which occupant is doing it. I don't particularly care about nametags and whatnot, but what we desperately need is some way of linking the chat log to the character - whether this a mask id, or some other sort of id I don't really know. My personal experience so far is that this change has caused more problems than the issue it was implemented to fix.

Imagine being in a faction with @lambchops leading it ?

To address the second point, in a text roleplay server you have to make certain concessions when it comes to movement, especially when driving as it takes time for people to type. Slowing down to pass a group has several benefits both IC and OOC: OOC: Allows interaction between both through emotes. (The range of what you'd 'see' is far greater than /me distance). OOC: Depending on graphics settings, allows you to actually make out faces/tattoos that'd be much easier to see IRL. IC: Officer presence, meaning you slow down to make it known you're in the area to deter crime. IC: Some areas of South LS are known for people running around/at cruisers. If you're going at speed there may be a chance you hit them (OOC: Plus desync around people could be issues).

I think a small clinic would be nice to see in the server. If it goes really well, it opens up a possibility for a player-ran hospital. However, we need to be careful with forcing people to use them because if they stop working for any reason then it impacts heavily on everyone.

120,000 trees died to fuel the evasion of LSPD in rental blistas. What's the real crime here?

Is all good ? We didn't have fast-roping though ?

That was actually our first ever shot filmed, we had it way back before your second entry was made ? Either way, it's a great shot in both videos ?

My experience with the GOV faction has been varied. Being part of PD's public relations I figured I would have seen more of them, but bar the odd question here and there I didn't really interact with them. However afterwards I look a bit further into the faction and I realised the immense amount of foundation work they've been putting in. A lot of people are focussing on the pure roleplay side of it, which is great, but a faction this important and controlling needs to have a lot of work put into it from an OOC and non-public perspective. One of the great things I've learnt and hasn't necessarily been publicised massively is that all of our factions now have proper budgets and whatnot, which means we aren't basically given free reign to spend what we want and instead have to manage our resources. Whilst we are a roleplay server, we are still using game scripts, so we need to make sure that's being managed in tandem. On the topic of parties, it's a shame we don't have too much variation between them. but then this is a small population (of players) who all generally want the same things (legalisation, gun restrictions etc) - so if you actually wanted to win you'd have to pander to at least some of those values. The only problem for me is that there seem to be promises put out there that simply wouldn't be doable for a city-level administration (more specifically the death penalty). I'm not 100% on American government organisation but from my understanding, a city can't override state law. In summary, I honestly think we're at a turning point in terms of the government. I've seen more public-orientated activity and engagement than before and based on what I've been told that's only set to increase. I can't speak for their faction because this is all based purely on my observations, but I have the utmost faith in the current government leadership and their handling of politics in the server. Once the time is right, and only then, should we look at expanding the political scene - because if we overreach and it falls apart, it could have devastating consequences for the entire server.

I'd be all for this idea if it could be implemented properly, however, I don't believe we're currently at the point we could do that. The prevailing argument for it seems to be that it'd "create roleplay" which I agree, it would, but this would be for a small number of people at the expense of making an already disliked system much more complicated and unenjoyable for the majority. Previous posts have already brought this up, but I believe the amount of time and work that would be needed to maintain a list of insured vehicles is not reliably attainable. Insurance companies have hundreds if not thousands of employees and automated systems working full time that let them manage their insured vehicles. Here you'd have a few people working whenever they felt like it, attempting to manage things in a server with more than 20,000 player vehicles (according to UCP). Essentially, what I'm saying is that you'd need a way to guarantee service and the only way to do this I can see is automate it, which counteracts the whole point of having players manage it. Because of this, it is my opinion that the script as it currently is managed is honestly the best way we can handle it for now as a server.

I think you're confusing the term 'slang' with 'accent', maybe?

On a note about using British slang - probably THE hardest thing for me as a Brit is roleplaying an American character. The biggest offender for me is using "cheers" when thanking someone, and I almost always have to correct myself (and sometimes I don't even notice!). On the flip side, we have quite a few foreign national characters with dual citizenship or otherwise - so generally the ones that are over-the-top British are purposefully done so. Once again, this comes back to my point of character choices - it's not something you can 'dictate' to someone, and is once again the same reason that there are a large number of Eastern European and Asian characters.