Let's talk about something

[SolenopsisΔ]

I'm making this thread not to bash a certain person, a certain faction, or the whole community in general. I'm making this thread because I want to talk about something that's be very very rare lately...unique ideas.

The main aspect of a roleplaying community is how unique an idea someone comes up with, unique idea for a character, a business, a faction etc. But lately I've noticed that the GtaW is suffering from an unearthly plague that will slowly doom us all...bland repetitive ideas.

While the factions and characters on the server still maintain a good stability of uniqueness, a great example of where these bland ideas can be seen is in three main businesses that somehow rule the entire server: Nightclubs, Bars and Stripclubs. Even if other communities have these three (especially bars), a big problem with these three businesses that happens in the server is that they're never unique. They all have the same interior, they all play the same music, they all do the same thing over and over and over again.  Now, I'll give the interior thing the benefit of the doubt because the furniture system is kinda weird at the current time. Same with the music as in the end it's whatever, you can mute the audio and play whatever you want.

But the main issue I have with these is that they never do something unique other than occasional "Theme nights" (Where they pretty much they do the same thing as normal nights but players get to make funky costumes for their character). But here's my question to players who do that: Why is it a one time thing? Why don't you take one theme for one of those "theme nights" and make your club to be around that theme?

I know why: Because you're afraid it will kill your club. And guess what, it will. How do I know this? Because it's a thing that happens every time on this server: Unique stuff gets killed because nobody pays attention to it and the owner loses motivation.

Here are some examples where these has happened is with these following ideas:
 

 

I have been to two of these places and something I noticed is that these places only rely on bringing more unique rp to the table and never ever rely on how much money they're getting, so they usually down prices on stuff they use. However on the other side of the road, where you got all the clubs, bars and nightclubs, the prices are almost unreal, for example they entry fee which is usually like $100 dollars or more, or the drinks ( Paying $40 dollars just to get a non-scripted soda for example, this has happened to me btw ). One other thing that I've also noticed is that on one side you barely got 3-4 people coming on to buy stuff, where on the other side you got almost a packed place full of people.

This only leads me to believe that people are generally interested in ideas that have been done so many times they become shit and they don't enjoy unique rp anymore.

---

To close this whole shitty thread, I will now lay down what I think the community should do to stop this:

• If you see a good unique idea do not hesitate to support it however you can. Share it to people, get groups of friends to also support it etc.
• If you already own a bar/club or plan on getting one do this: fetch a specific theme and use that specific theme for your club every time you open;
  Spoiler

   For example here's an idea that I tried doing with my "Bone Zone": A skeleton themed bar. What I wanted to do surrounding this theme was getting the staff to wear skeleton makeup and wear funny clothes, that's all. I also wanted to add spooky props around the bar too, but the furniture system blocked me from doing so.

  
  or if you don't want to do that do this instead: activities; Do live performances, come up with an interesting system for something like pool, card games, (hi-lo, blackjack etc.) you name it. Don't just open your business, wait for people come in, play music and let them dance around like robots

[Chef]

It's incredibly hard for anything unique to get any attention. I like to think my horse racing business is a unique concept, as it involves an interactive game for people to roleplay around. However, people roleplaying Americans would rather gamble at random blackjack tables in clubs or bet on European sports games that no American would ever have an interest in paying attention to.

[Burr]

Bump.  I like this 

[thot_banned]

Sad but true. It's either not shared around or marketed well I guess is one way to put it, and it seems most people that aren't roleplaying illegal shit are typically just sat in bars or in cop cars 24/7 rather than going to unique stuff like mentioned in the main post, atleast going off what I've personally seen. The lack of interest tends to kill the ambition in the end for most cases, as I've had and I know several other people who've also had some pretty unique ideas but are more of the mind of only trying them if we know it'll work. There's nothing more de-motivating than to try something new and unique to just have it essentially only cater to you and your friends, without a lick of interest from anyone else in the server.

 

It's a shame honestly, but - at least from what I've been seeing while paying attention to little things here n there in-game and through FaceBrowser, it seems to at least be changing, albeit at a disappointingly slow pace. Unique little things like that always bring in the most memorable experiences with RP IMO. I miss a lot of it myself because of how random my sleep schedule can get but I really don't get why everyone would prefer boring chitchat & a dance animation over visiting all the hidden gems around. They need more spotlight, tbh. A lot of the unique RP that actually gets attention to some extent is usually in the characters over bigger ideas like small businesses and what not. In time I'm sure that will change, or at least I hope it will. There was this really weird stage where everyone was actually doing a ton of different things and stuff was poppin off, and then it suddenly died down to literally nothing but clubbing all the time for some reason, but I've noticed the slow change, so here's hoping that picks up a little quicker. This topic might even help people get more encouraged to do their own ideas as well. Would be dope if it does.

[Scorgasmic]

Definitely agree. This has been a problem even back on SA-MP days to be honest.

 

The thing is, I guess the unique roleplay, since it's not backed by the script, it doesn't attract people as much. Everything has to be roleplayed via the core of the script, such as talking in-character, using /me, /do and transferring money with /pay or /banktransfer. There's also no penalties. What I mean by that is:

 

Let's take the Gaming & Tech Specialists idea for example. There are no scripted computers in-game which give you additional features. Neither is there a script to cause your phone to randomly stop working. If there was such a thing, hell yeah, Tech Stores would flourish. Because the script forces people to have to roleplay that aspect. But considering the script does not, I'm sure a lot of people think well why should I bother fixing a computer that's just fictitious in my mind, when I could be at the garage actually modifying my in-game vehicle?

 

As long as it's not mandatory or something exciting such as mafia/gang related roleplay, being a cop, going to a bar because it's easy to roleplay your character getting pissed and so on, it's harder to get the community on board.

 

And not only that, but unique roleplay tends to take more effort, especially to get it off the ground. And a lot of people I don't think are interested in the initial process. Most people want to just jump into the game, and have fun. Unless the idea is close to your heart or you're a serious roleplayer, you're not interested in devoting time to develop a unique roleplay idea. You just want to jump into something that's already active and exciting.

 

For me, personally, I see both sides of it. But I welcome new ideas and I will always try to get involved. I only play casually when I have time, so I may not have time to devote to developing ideas, but I certainly try to take part. And I'm glad when new roleplay opportunities flourish. It brings more diversity to the server and presents more fun things to do than the same thing day in and day out.

[Vash Baldeus]

22 minutes ago, Scorgasmic said:

Definitely agree. This has been a problem even back on SA-MP days to be honest.

 

The thing is, I guess the unique roleplay, since it's not backed by the script, it doesn't attract people as much. Everything has to be roleplayed via the core of the script, such as talking in-character, using /me, /do and transferring money with /pay or /banktransfer. There's also no penalties. What I mean by that is:

 

Let's take the Gaming & Tech Specialists idea for example. There are no scripted computers in-game which give you additional features. Neither is there a script to cause your phone to randomly stop working. If there was such a thing, hell yeah, Tech Stores would flourish. Because the script forces people to have to roleplay that aspect. But considering the script does not, I'm sure a lot of people think well why should I bother fixing a computer that's just fictitious in my mind, when I could be at the garage actually modifying my in-game vehicle?

 

As long as it's not mandatory or something exciting such as mafia/gang related roleplay, being a cop, going to a bar because it's easy to roleplay your character getting pissed and so on, it's harder to get the community on board.

 

And not only that, but unique roleplay tends to take more effort, especially to get it off the ground. And a lot of people I don't think are interested in the initial process. Most people want to just jump into the game, and have fun. Unless the idea is close to your heart or you're a serious roleplayer, you're not interested in devoting time to develop a unique roleplay idea. You just want to jump into something that's already active and exciting.

 

For me, personally, I see both sides of it. But I welcome new ideas and I will always try to get involved. I only play casually when I have time, so I may not have time to devote to developing ideas, but I certainly try to take part. And I'm glad when new roleplay opportunities flourish. It brings more diversity to the server and presents more fun things to do than the same thing day in and day out.

That sounds like a well written suggestion.

[Pascal]

7 hours ago, SolenopsisΔ said:

a great example of where these bland ideas can be seen is in three main businesses that somehow rule the entire server: Nightclubs, Bars and Stripclubs. Even if other communities have these three (especially bars), a big problem with these three businesses that happens in the server is that they're never unique. They all have the same interior, they all play the same music, they all do the same thing over and over and over again. 

I'm very aware of this problem, and it's why I've been working on what I've been working on from a development perspective.

 

If you look through what sort of interiors we have currently, it gives you a good indicator of our current situation. There's been a lack of variety and choice for what interior you can pick for several months: in terms of "public facing" businesses (so excluding things like offices, warehouses etc.), there's not many there to choose from: a handful of nightclubs and bars, and a few others like liquor stores, hairdressers and clothing stores, several of which have only got "proper support" recently.

 

With the previous lack of a functional furniture system and a low amount of interiors available, it's lead to the vast majority of properties that we have requested to be mostly the same - we see a lot of nightclubs and bars requested, and most nights on the servers are the same situation - constant ads for nightclubs/bars/stripclubs, with other types of businesses being unlikely to crop up. It's been a problem in two key parts: 1) lack of access to diverse interiors & 2) lack of motivation to try out ideas that are different when it comes to properties.

 

So, how does something like this get solved?

 

Firstly, on the technical side of things we're pushing in several changes to open huge opportunity when it comes to interiors. I've just finished coding a feature today that allows us to spawn in Interior Props inside certain vanilla GTA 5 interiors. These aren't the same as furni objects, but rather items that are "physically attached" (unmovable) to some of the vanilla GTA 5 interiors. If you've noticed some of your interiors have missing sofas/beds/furniture by default, it's because the right Interior Props aren't spawned in. With this new system, players will have the ability to tweak and customise certain vanilla interiors, changing the variants/appearance of their properties. This will give us an increased variety to what we can do with interiors, and has some interesting potential implications for illegal RP that I'll be speaking to FM about in the coming days (nothing confirmed yet).

 

Sneak peak of Interior Props system

Spoiler

NOTE: these are just examples of Interior Props being spawned in, there aren't any plans for systems for the illegal interiors* in place at the moment - the below screenshots are just demonstrations of what kind of objects can be spawned in:

 

Floyd's Apartment

Spoiler

 

Michael's House

Spoiler

 

Cocaine Lockup*

Spoiler

 

Counterfeit Cash*

Spoiler

 

Document Forgery*

Spoiler

 

Weed Farm*

Spoiler

 

After Hours Interiors

Spoiler

 

 

While Interior Props can bring extra variety, they can only bring so much. They'll definitely add some more options, and even though there'll be a decent amount of new interior possibilities, it's still a finite number of possibilities. Which leads to the next thing we're pushing for: mapping, and the introduction of more custom objects, enabling both players to get more creative with the businesses they want to create, and also allowing us to have a dedicated team aiming to create unique interiors to provide more variety to the server. We'll be looking to import more interiors to the server, some in the form of mods, and some tailor-made by the mapping team, which will then be distributed out to players (likely through leases). With both of these in mind, we're aiming for 1) more diverse interiors and 2) easy access to them, hopefully addressing the above problems.

 

On top of this, we'll be pushing for continued improvements to RP jobs. Currently the payouts are low, we'll be adding ways for us to track earnings and then use this to improve payouts, and expand to new types of script stores (more information in the future). Roleplay jobs/businesses will become more attractive with more support, balance and types, which should hopefully lead to a wider variety of businesses opening up rather than just nightclub-bar-nightclub-bar-nightclub-bar.

 

There'll be more information on this in the future, but I hope this helps address concerns about things being too samey. It's something we've wanted to tackle for a long time within Property Management, and the combination of the recent object fixes, the upcoming RAGE:MP patch for easier downloading of client mods (allowing for new objects), and the increased activity of the current Property team all coming around the same time have opened huge opportunity for us to make progress in this specific area. 

[alma]

Thank you. Someone finally speaks out. 

[Thirteen]

I keep repeating myself to some extent here, but I'd like to think that I've played my part in trying to provide a unique business idea with my tattoo shop. Back when I first joined the server and tried figuring out how to bring my idea to life, I got told several times by both players and staff members at the time that I was just wasting my time, and that most of the server wouldn't care nor have any interest in visiting. But I decided to create my business anyways, because I was curious as well. Curious if it would work or not.

 

During that time, I've gone through stages where I've dealt with leasing fees, tried out entry fees (which I've happily refunded if people didn't have money on them, for example), gone through stages where I've spent more on ads than I've made through my business, and eventually finally reaching a point where I own my business, got script support and feel like I'm comfortable bringing in more people to cover more time zones. 

 

So I believe that I have a bit of experience when it comes to this now, and it's been a bit of a interesting road so far. I feel like I've proven to the rest of the server that it's possible to provide this sort of roleplay, with some dedication involved. And that there is an interest in it from the server population as well. It's still a niche, but it's a been a enjoyable experience to provide that type of roleplay for that particular group of players interested. 

 

That being said, I can definitely see where you're coming from. I would love to see more creative businesses as well, and I absolutely appreciate and share the sentiment that you're mentioning in your first post. 

If people want more unique concepts brought to the server, then people need to support those concepts when they become more than just an idea as well. 

Edited February 5, 2019 by Thirteen

[SolenopsisΔ]

7 hours ago, Pascal said:

Sneak peak of Interior Props system

 

 

While Interior Props can bring extra variety, they can only bring so much. They'll definitely add some more options, and even though there'll be a decent amount of new interior possibilities, it's still a finite number of possibilities. Which leads to the next thing we're pushing for: mapping, and the introduction of more custom objects, enabling both players to get more creative with the businesses they want to create, and also allowing us to have a dedicated team aiming to create unique interiors to provide more variety to the server. We'll be looking to import more interiors to the server, some in the form of mods, and some tailor-made by the mapping team, which will then be distributed out to players (likely through leases). With both of these in mind, we're aiming for 1) more diverse interiors and 2) easy access to them, hopefully addressing the above problems.

This looks like an interesting feature, I'm definitely curious to see if people will use it for something creative (hopefully yes). Wouldn't want to see just the same routine in every other bar or club but with a different interior each time.
 

 

10 hours ago, Scorgasmic said:

The thing is, I guess the unique roleplay, since it's not backed by the script, it doesn't attract people as much. Everything has to be roleplayed via the core of the script, such as talking in-character, using /me, /do and transferring money with /pay or /banktransfer. There's also no penalties

That is true. Maybe with the latest announcements this may change. The only thing we can definitely do right now is make-do, or maybe twist up some of the current features into something interesting. Recently I saw that a gun range opened up, using the Ammu-Nation businesses. Maybe more people can do something similar with some of the other available roleplay jobs, who knows.

 

 

6 hours ago, Thirteen said:

I keep repeating myself to some extent here, but I'd like to think that I've played my part in trying to provide a unique business idea with my tattoo shop.

You definitely did play your part with the tattoo shop thing, and should also encourage more people to do so. You're one of the very few creative businesses on this server that still manages to stand itself up despite the wave of *other stuff*. 

Idk I wanted to reply to some of the comments here