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Before I get into the body of this discussion I need to preface and say that this is not all robber roleplayers, but it is a loud minority which ruins the RP for those who actually want to put the effort into it. There are people who want to roleplay a robbery, and there are people who want to do robberies to get items. Important distinction, wherein lines are blurred due to proximity which results in "victims" being overly-vigilant and oftentimes not wanting to engage genuine RPers when it rarely happens. I am completely fine with robbery RP as long as it is done properly. I think there's an excess on the server, but I don't have a problem with the concept itself. Only execution. I know people are very likely going to respond with this thread with "Robbery isn't as big a problem as you make it out to be" or "this is an exaggeration" but I can tell you it simply isn't. I've got a main character that's robbed constantly and I respond to robberies all day long on my LEO character. It's a complete epidemic on the server which has forced legal characters into hiding behind closed doors and has made the streets desolate. So. Robberies. They happen a lot in real life, no doubt, and even more ingame. A startling amount, actually, far beyond the crime rate of any developed country I've ever seen. Let's talk robberies. I have not a single doubt in my mind that both serious criminal roleplayers and legal roleplayers are fed up with the current status quo of armed robberies. As it stands, no roleplay is required to stick someone up, whatsoever, only to search them. If you see a target sitting on the side of the road or passive roleplaying, an emote isn't required to initiate the robbery. This results in piss-poor, low-effort roleplay from some of those criminal players who aren't interested in the heavy RP side of things and only script items... And this in turn, makes legal RPers assume every single robbery will be of this same quality, promoting a toxic environment where neither side wants to roleplay and both want to get it over with as fast as possible. The poorly-roleplaying robber to get his or her sweet sweet items, and the victim for their passive roleplay being interrupted by a guy running up without any emotes to stick them up. It also promotes the slow rise of vigilantism and the militarization/desensitization of CCW and PF holders, which is a massive point of contention in the illegal RP community, and for good reason. As a friend of mine put while we were discussing it: "It's kind of a self-defeating circle of escalation. Legal RPer gets robbed multiple times, so Legal RPer gets quick on the draw. Illegal RPer starts shortening or not typing their /mes to catch people off guard harder leading to faster and looser RP in the hopes of actually completing a robbery. Legal RPer gets fed up with "low effort" robbers and starts gassing them. Illegal RPer gets fed up with getting gassed and starts doing super quick /mes or none at all, extend, ruin, repeat." The fact of the matter is, no matter how good someone could be at roleplaying out their robbery, no matter how much effort they put into their emotes, the norm is for there to be minimal roleplay at all, with a mix of IC and OOC chatter ("/showitems", etc.) Granted, things must be taken into account when roleplaying out a robbery, such as time, and that's completely fair - this could be combatted by 'timescaling', which is something we did often on servers I had been to past. (Timescale is simply informing responding parties that the situation would realistically be over or however many turns ahead by the time they arrive, given that emotes take time to write. Players were held by that standard, and situations would be based on turns [e.g. "timescale is 5 emotes, back up and let us RP this please?"]. which kept it fair for all involved and allowed everyone the proper time to do their actions.) But to not roleplay at all, and leave all the effort on the victim themselves because you as a player, playing a character who is committing an intrinsically dangerous act, don't want your character to get caught- is an insult to both the victim, and other people who put more effort into their RP of robbery, walk-ups, and shakedowns. This needs to stop. As we can see in these two clips and many others, out of around ten to fifteen robberies and attempted robberies I've personally been involved in over the last nearly two years on this server, only one of them had enough roleplay to be memorable. Every single other one has been a repeat of the last. Blacked out car/bike rolls up in a nice neighborhood during daylight --> start to emote looking over at it --> the moment the typing indicator goes up, someone hops out, points a gun with no emote whatsoever, and just shouts "hands up!" Here's an example of the kind of fantastic stuff I was subjected to during the last two robberies I have recorded. ^This was the only emote this person dropped whatsoever, until they were dead, at which point they emoted "being shot multiple times" then disconnected. Because he didn't get the scripted items he wanted, MASK in this situation kept PMing me to /showitems. He then /pmed me he wanted my character's phone without doing any prior roleplay of taking it, and patted my character down a second time with a similarly short, nondescriptive /me to try to get the gun he saw flash into view when my character exited the vehicle, which was stored middle-back, not where he one-line searched earlier. This robbery was about my PF firearm, not about any sort of development or portrayal, and not for the benefit of this player's character, only the player themselves. When the people my character contacted for help arrived and he was killed, he took it straight to a report, which was handled ingame with a void-, but during the course of it spoke multiple times about needing a refund for his five rounds ammunition and being distressed that he would lose his character's machine pistol. Note the use of 'items' in the emote. Robbery should never be exclusively about items. If you're robbing for items first and roleplay second you are the problem. Is this our new standard of roleplay, where little to no roleplay has to be done at all? This is sad to see, because it's completely jaded and turned off most most legal RPers from RPing outside or in general, and completely destroys any development someone could get off of that interaction. One of the ways gangs initiate new members is having them run an armed robbery because it is scary to rob someone at gunpoint yet I never see any new-bloods trembling as they ask for a wallet, or any spare cash. It's always about the script items it seems, never about the roleplay. I have no doubts those of you in the Illegal RP side are fed up with being smoked by CCW holders while trying to properly RP out an armed robbery, but this is why that happens. If the status quo is that no common courtesy of emoting anything is to be shown by the initiator, why should a passerby or the victim, given it's not failure to RP fear, not extend that same lack of courtesy by going straight to script means? It's toxic, it's reactionary, but it's simply the reality of the matter. This server has turned to cops and robbers. So I propose this: Staff, if possible- please start paying more attention to robberies and enforcing roleplay standards as much as possible. Someone shouldn't be allowed to simply scroll a machine gun and yell "hands up", that isn't roleplay, that's complete nonsense. Victims shouldn't be held to some roleplay standard if the initiator doesn't bother putting in any emotes themselves. Illegal RPers, police your people, call out bad actors and contribute more into these sorts of scenarios. Drop an emote about your character being nervous. Drop an emote about where exactly your character is checking someone. And stop promoting robberies just for the sake of scoring an easy firearm. It's corny as hell. The term "one bad apple spoils the whole barrel" applies pretty heavily here; most legal roleplayers (myself included) have become so disillusioned with being robbed constantly no matter where we are on the map that we've lost motivation to even log into our character. The burden doesn't completely fall on the initiator, legal roleplayers need to learn how to not assume every robber is going to be the same, and RP out robberies. But until effort is shown on that initiating party's side, why should they bother doing so? It's simply common courtesy on a roleplay server to roleplay, and they receive none, so why should they be obligated to roleplay back? Armed robbery RP as it stands is a self-perpetuating problem with no solution until higher roleplay standards are enforced, be it by staff or by fellow players. Discuss. Keep it civil. This isn't a thread to shit on people because you don't like how they reacted to a robbery before or you don't like how they robbed you. Names were omitted from all of my examples for a very good reason, because this thread is meant to address a concern, not be a witch hunt. Thank you, that's all.