Make more gun suppliers and change how suppliers actually work.

[soudiere]

Detailed Description:

The gun market for your average illegal roleplayer is terrible. There is such a scarcity of weapons and such disparity between those that have the capacity to hoard guns and your average illegal roleplayer that it puts American wealth inequality to shame. It is frankly absurd how this root issue of the illegal community hasn't been addressed in the slightest. Not only is it a matter of realism, in regards to the fact that it should not at all be as difficult or as costly for a criminal to attain a firearm, it's a matter of solving the fact that it genuinely detracts from the quality of illegal roleplay but it ends up forcing the illegal community to interface with the rest of the community in an inherently negative manner.

 

Most notably this can be seen in the fact that:

• Guns are such a scarcity that as opposed to actually interacting with other factions to obtain weapons, who also don't have shit, you're basically in a position where the only way to position yourself to obtain a weapon is by either robbing civilians for their PF's or by robbing other criminals. Nobody is going to risk a felony if they can just call a guy up and grab a gun. 
• Traffic stops would not nearly result in as many shoot-outs as they do if guns weren't such a rarity. Nobody's risking life for a misdemeanor, but when losing a firearm means losing 10% to 20% of your faction's fighting capabilities, basically being left defenseless for a month minimum and not being able to engage in RP involving store robberies, stick-ups, any kind of crime that is reliant on intimidation with a firearm or basically any kind of confrontational illegal roleplay, then yeah, most people will take that chance.

 

Off the top of my head, what's also been a result or is currently a result of such scarcity has been:

• OOC circles effectively being able to monopolize the gun market, as it is incredibly small despite how high in demand it is, and OOC deals basically being a necessity to an extent as an illegal roleplayer. This is an issue that will only get resolved by addressing the root issue, a huge scarcity of guns, no matter how you frame it. Not to mention, even going beyond the monopolization of it, if you have a supplier role and are OOC friends with people that need guns on a character, you're going to be viewed as a dick for not helping them out because of how valuable they are, how rare they are and how crucial they are for a faction to survive and to project power.
• Such desperation from other factions for guns makes it that gun scams are so lucrative and so easy to pull off that it's absurd. The fact that factions are hurting for guns so badly, that I can make a Facebrowser account that's clearly fraudulent and consistently be able to scam various factions out of $30,000 is absurd. Nobody would even be willing to bite for such obvious bait if a faction's survival wasn't contingent on having guns, while simultaneously lacking the means to actually have guns.
• Blockwipes are completely feasible even if there's nineteen people on a block because I can guarantee that only 20% to 40% of the members there actually have a firearm.
• The fact that looting, while completely dumb from a portrayal standpoint, was something that was understandable and to an extent even accepted as long as not publicly displayed by most illegal RP'ers should be a sign of something. This is a ROLEPLAY server, people are coming here to roleplay. The fact that a certain commodity, firearms, is so valuable and such a necessity while being so scarce in supply is what made every single illegal RP'er, whether or not they agreed with the action, understand it should at least be obvious that there's a bigger issue than just looting.
• Guns are in such high demand that it's not exactly uncommon practice for those with drug supplier roles, those with labs and those with schemes for drugs decide to trade in their drugs for weapons. The fact that people are completely willing to forsake what is effectively, their power base and content for their characters and faction members, should not be interpreted as illegal RP'ers being desperate to get guns so they can DM people, but should be taken as a sign of how bad the situation genuinely is.
• To add on to all of this, even if you know multiple gun suppliers, if you met them that month, chances are you aren't getting shit until the month later or two months later because everybody and their mother pre-ordered a weapon suppliers guns to begin with.
• Additionally, the ability of larger umbrella factions to actually project their power and supply the factions that fall under them is severely hampered. As somebody that used to pretty heavily roleplay a Sureno, weapon drops would alternate between Sureno facs every other month. What does this result in? A faction that would, realistically, be pretty dependent on this umbrella faction has to turn to other factions or rob PF civilians if they want to continue projecting power through potential war strength, something very important for most illegal factions, especially gangs. Why do they need to do this? Because each of these sets are at most getting five to ten guns every other month when their factions usually have ten to twenty active players and by the amount of roleplay that occurs in a month, are likely going to have some members have their guns confiscated by law enforcement or losing them in a shoot out. 

 

Now, I'm sure others can list ways that this manifests in illegal RP and how it hampers it and lowers its quality, or how this issue causes illegal RP'ers to interface in a manner that just results in bad RP with LEO RP'ers and legal RP'ers and in fact I encourage others to do so, but I don't want to make this absurdly long.

 

Relevant Commands/Items:

Increasing the total amount of suppliers in regards to firearms, establishing a minor Small Arms Supplier role and a major Arms Supplier role, increasing the amount of firearms suppliers get in general and shifting from a monthly drop basis to a weekly one.

 

That said, suppliers and anybody dealing a firearm should be held accountable to an extent if knowingly selling to a party that is only interesting in DM'ing or doing some dumb shit.

 

How will this benefit the server:

The majority of the issues highlighted will either be substantially mitigated or be basically rendered a non-issue. I'd also be willing to wager that the excessive and unrealistic actions taken by illegal RP'ers when interacting with either LEO RP'ers or legal RP'ers, mostly in the form of shooting during a traffic stop or robbing for PF's, will decrease pretty heavily without having to necessitate overbearing rules that restrict roleplay.

 

The only way this could harm the server is by shitty roleplayers having more capacity to enact shitty roleplay upon others, whether it be through excess DM or just poor quality confrontational interactions, such as robberies. But at that point, just ban them. The idea that people who just want to roleplay should have to suffer from bad faith actors that can easily be reported, caught and then banned is insane. It'd be akin to saying that just because some legal RP'ers have poor portrayal when it comes to wealth, that high rise apartments and expensive cars should be restricted when it could easily be resolved with an RPQM report. 

 

Hindering roleplay because of a couple of bad faith actors or people that are just incompetent when it comes to roleplay should never be the case. There are of course exceptions, but that's mostly covered by roleplay deemed disgusting or offensive.

 

Not to mention, this is literally simple supply and demand economics. For Americans, the only reason why college is so costly is because every single kid is encouraged to go to college, high demand, yet we don't have nearly enough institutions or people skilled enough to actually teach such levels of education, low supply. For Europeans, the same goes for property ownership and living space. I don't think I need to necessarily explain how not having the necessary supply for the demand of such things has led to disastrous consequences for both demographics and regions. I get some may view it silly to apply economics to a fictional roleplay server, but it's applicable nonetheless.

Edited September 24, 2023 by soudiere

[Eastside.Shady]

I agree. Suppliers really don't have that much sway in the grand scheme of things. 10-15 guns sounds great, sure. But rarely will you be able to supply more than 2 or 3 factions every month, each getting a handful of guns. Also, you, as the supplier, can keep only 20% for yourself. Five guns a month to a faction that averages 10+ members a day is a joke. Combine that with the very frequent traffic stops leading to firearm seizures and you're looking at the very, very dire state of the  gun market on GTA:W. At this point, gun suppliers deal with drug suppliers/drug lab owners almost exclusively. Doesn't that sound insane?

There's a reason there's been so many reports on looting and so many patchwork fixes to try and reduce it, from making guns break to actual cooldowns on the ability to loot bodies. The traffic stop turned shootout aspect has already been mentioned but it's shocking to me to see how few people attribute that to the scarcity of guns. But, to be fair, half of the people on this forum think guns are falling out of trees and crawling out of drain pipes with what you see in general discussion threads.

 

Truth is, making something so ubiquitous with criminal roleplay, like guns, such a valued and rare resource is one of the biggest reasons as to why there's a RMT market, OOC dealings, rampant corruption and rule breaking, and so many "reporting to void" reports. Also:

 

11 minutes ago, soudiere said:

But at that point, just ban them.

Yes.

[Bigg]

+1

[BLUE HUNDREDS]

everything you said here is facts, and you literally explained it just how I wanted to explain it on other threads but I couldn't think of the words.

It's crazy that at some point of your faction's run you'll be the only person in your faction with a connection, and you'll have to find a way to hand out 20 guns but this whole time some suppliers only hand 5-10 at a time because they got like 4 other factions to supply and not just yours. This means that your faction will be an easy target because you're going against other factions who already got a full stash of guns and you'll also have to wait for multiple months just to get all of your gang members armed - also mentioning the fact that while you're waiting for 3-5 months to get every single one of your members a weapon, multiple of them will lose their current weapon.

In my opinion suppliers should also start to do small-time business with regular gang members and not just the IC "head" of the faction, maybe even hand out 1 pistol and ~50 ammo every other 1 or 2 weeks.

Literally the only reason people go on robbery sprees on civilians is for weapons, because you don't expect a civilian to carry 500g of coke on them or something like that.

So yeah, instead of adding rules to stop all these robberies, maybe make the illegal RP & supplier RP scene better. I swear it's not hard to hand a supplier 5 up to 20 guns for each faction they supplying, and the amount of guns depend on the quality they show on their threads.

[Cartoonhead]

Biggest +1 ever. I'm so sick of the dancing around the issue, while some fac/players have massive vault level stashes of firearms and ammo, while other get nothing, and can't get anything even if they spent all their time trying to. It's beyond a joke. Sort it the fuck out. 

[debla az zanm]

21 minutes ago, soudiere said:

Detailed Description:

The gun market for your average illegal roleplayer is terrible. There is such a scarcity of weapons and such disparity between those that have the capacity to hoard guns and your average illegal roleplayer that it puts American wealth inequality to shame. It is frankly absurd how this root issue of the illegal community hasn't been addressed in the slightest. Not only is it a matter of realism, in regards to the fact that it should not at all be as difficult or as costly for a criminal to attain a firearm, it's a matter of solving the fact that it genuinely detracts from the quality of illegal roleplay but it ends up forcing the illegal community to interface with the rest of the community in an inherently negative manner.

 

Most notably this can be seen in the fact that:

• Guns are such a scarcity that as opposed to actually interacting with other factions to obtain weapons, who also don't have shit, you're basically in a position where the only way to position yourself to obtain a weapon is by either robbing civilians for their PF's or by robbing other criminals. Nobody is going to risk a felony if they can just call a guy up and grab a gun. 
• Traffic stops would not nearly result in as many shoot-outs as they do if guns weren't such a rarity. Nobody's risking life for a misdemeanor, but when losing a firearm means losing 10% to 20% of your faction's fighting capabilities, basically being left defenseless for a month minimum and not being able to engage in RP involving store robberies, stick-ups, any kind of crime that is reliant on intimidation with a firearm or basically any kind of confrontational illegal roleplay, then yeah, most people will take that chance.

 

Off the top of my head, what's also been a result or is currently a result of such scarcity has been:

• OOC circles effectively being able to monopolize the gun market, as it is incredibly small despite how high in demand it is, and OOC deals basically being a necessity to an extent as an illegal roleplayer. This is an issue that will only get resolved by addressing the root issue, a huge scarcity of guns, no matter how you frame it. Not to mention, even going beyond the monopolization of it, if you have a supplier role and are OOC friends with people that need guns on a character, you're going to be viewed as a dick for not helping them out because of how valuable they are, how rare they are and how crucial they are for a faction to survive and to project power.
• Such desperation from other factions for guns makes it that gun scams are so lucrative and so easy to pull off that it's absurd. The fact that factions are hurting for guns so badly, that I can make a Facebrowser account that's clearly fraudulent and consistently be able to scam various factions out of $30,000 is absurd. Nobody would even be willing to bite for such obvious bait if a faction's survival wasn't contingent on having guns, while simultaneously lacking the means to actually have guns.
• Blockwipes are completely feasible even if there's nineteen people on a block because I can guarantee that only 20% to 40% of the members there actually have a firearm.
• The fact that looting, while completely dumb from a portrayal standpoint, was something that was understandable and to an extent even accepted as long as not publicly displayed by most illegal RP'ers should be a sign of something. This is a ROLEPLAY server, people are coming here to roleplay. The fact that a certain commodity, firearms, is so valuable and such a necessity while being so scarce in supply is what made every single illegal RP'er, whether or not they agreed with the action, understand it should at least be obvious that there's a bigger issue than just looting.
• Guns are in such high demand that it's not exactly uncommon practice for those with drug supplier roles, those with labs and those with schemes for drugs decide to trade in their drugs for weapons. The fact that people are completely willing to forsake what is effectively, their power base and content for their characters and faction members, should not be interpreted as illegal RP'ers being desperate to get guns so they can DM people, but should be taken as a sign of how bad the situation genuinely is.
• To add on to all of this, even if you know multiple gun suppliers, if you met them that month, chances are you aren't getting shit until the month later or two months later because everybody and their mother pre-ordered a weapon suppliers guns to begin with.
• Additionally, the ability of larger umbrella factions to actually project their power and supply the factions that fall under them is severely hampered. As somebody that used to pretty heavily roleplay a Sureno, weapon drops would alternate between Sureno facs every other month. What does this result in? A faction that would, realistically, be pretty dependent on this umbrella faction has to turn to other factions or rob PF civilians if they want to continue projecting power through potential war strength, something very important for most illegal factions, especially gangs. Why do they need to do this? Because each of these sets are at most getting five to ten guns every other month when their factions usually have ten to twenty active players and by the amount of roleplay that occurs in a month, are likely going to have some members have their guns confiscated by law enforcement or losing them in a shoot out. 

 

Now, I'm sure others can list ways that this manifests in illegal RP and how it hampers it and lowers its quality, or how this issue causes illegal RP'ers to interface in a manner that just results in bad RP with LEO RP'ers and legal RP'ers and in fact I encourage others to do so, but I don't want to make this absurdly long.

 

Relevant Commands/Items:

Increasing the total amount of suppliers in regards to firearms, establishing a minor Small Arms Supplier role and a major Arms Supplier role, increasing the amount of firearms suppliers get in general and shifting from a monthly drop basis to a weekly one.

 

That said, suppliers and anybody dealing a firearm should be held accountable to an extent if knowingly selling to a party that is only interesting in DM'ing or doing some dumb shit.

 

How will this benefit the server:

The majority of the issues highlighted will either be substantially mitigated or be basically rendered a non-issue. I'd also be willing to wager that the excessive and unrealistic actions taken by illegal RP'ers when interacting with either LEO RP'ers or legal RP'ers, mostly in the form of shooting during a traffic stop or robbing for PF's, will decrease pretty heavily without having to necessitate overbearing rules that restrict roleplay.

 

The only way this could harm the server is by shitty roleplayers having more capacity to enact shitty roleplay upon others, whether it be through excess DM or just poor quality confrontational interactions, such as robberies. But at that point, just ban them. The idea that people who just want to roleplay should have to suffer from bad faith actors that can easily be reported, caught and then banned is insane. It'd be akin to saying that just because some legal RP'ers have poor portrayal when it comes to wealth, that high rise apartments and expensive cars should be restricted when it could easily be resolved with an RPQM report. 

 

Hindering roleplay because of a couple of bad faith actors or people that are just incompetent when it comes to roleplay should never be the case. There are of course exceptions, but that's mostly covered by roleplay deemed disgusting or offensive.

+1 Finally, someone said something.

[ZaE]

Suggestion and topic has been made or brought up time and time again and they always give the same response. 
 

+1 from me, though. I wont provide much input cause i think the original poster did perfect. 

people will say that this is going to make the problem worse when it wont. Maybe gang factions will actually interact with each other and be able to have beef with OOC problems if their not worrying about losing the only gun they waited 4 months for. 

 

Edited September 24, 2023 by ZaE

[TyJ]

There’s a huge distribution issue plaguing the weapon supplier system currently, +1 from me.

[Eastside.Shady]

6 minutes ago, BLUE HUNDREDS said:

In my opinion suppliers should also start to do small-time business with regular gang members and not just the IC "head" of the faction, maybe even hand out 1 pistol and ~50 ammo every other 1 or 2 weeks.

You can't really, with current limits. The numbers suppliers get are insanely conservative and while IFM talks about "the opportunity to upgrade", I have yet to see or hear about anybody actually being upgraded.

[BLUE HUNDREDS]

7 minutes ago, Cartoonhead said:

Biggest +1 ever. I'm so sick of the dancing around the issue, while some fac/players have massive vault level stashes of firearms and ammo, while other get nothing, and can't get anything even if they spent all their time trying to. It's beyond a joke. Sort it the fuck out. 

Yeah facts. Most of the times it's just because of the faction's race or what they portraying. It's not a secret that black RPers probably have the hardest time getting supplies due to most of the suppliers being either white supremacists, racist Mexicans, or they simply don't like the people in said faction.

I'm not gonna sit here and say "give every faction 10 ars monthly" but come on bro... is it really that hard to chuck a few guns, ammo and some drugs IN BULK every other month to help the illegal RP scene? Give a faction meth, another faction cocaine, another one weed (list goes on) and just watch how the market starts flowing again.


This is literally the way to fix mass robberies, people risking their lives just to save their guns, overpriced weapons, shooting cops to save their guns, etc.

Edited September 24, 2023 by BLUE HUNDREDS