The Police Department & You

[Richie]

3 minutes ago, HerpToTheDerp said:

The main difference between a PD Character and a Illegal faction is that the application and system to get into PD is a lengthy process and going through it each time with repeat characters would be a waste of everyone's time. 

 

Even then, you can drop the officer that CKed thier character to a P1 but they'll quickly get back to the same rank as they know exactly what to do. 

Was just about to type up something similar.

Believe it or not, characters in a law enforcement faction have gone through a lot more than you have in your illegal faction. I've never even been in an LE faction but I can understand how frustrating it would be to have your character permanently erased and then have to be put through the same application process you've already spent so much time on before. Meanwhile, it may be hard to get into an illegal faction, but it's nowhere near what you have to do for the PD/FD. Having the same standards would just make it so tiring for LE officers, demotivating them, maybe enough to where they just decide not to do it anymore. Then we don't have a populated LE faction. Where does that get us?

I think the system should just stay where it's at.

[Ezrya]

1 hour ago, Richie said:

Was just about to type up something similar.

Believe it or not, characters in a law enforcement faction have gone through a lot more than you have in your illegal faction. I've never even been in an LE faction but I can understand how frustrating it would be to have your character permanently erased and then have to be put through the same application process you've already spent so much time on before. Meanwhile, it may be hard to get into an illegal faction, but it's nowhere near what you have to do for the PD/FD. Having the same standards would just make it so tiring for LE officers, demotivating them, maybe enough to where they just decide not to do it anymore. Then we don't have a populated LE faction. Where does that get us?

I think the system should just stay where it's at.

Lot's of players whether it be for a legal or illegal faction often go through a lengthy process to join and put hundreds of hours into their character development even once in. Illegal factions may not have an application and interview process but some can take longer than others to join depending on the faction so the same arguement applies to both legal and illegal characters. Just like you said It can also be frustrating to go through a long process of joining an illegal faction and spending a lot of time and dedication developing an interesting character just to have it permanantly erased and now having to go through the same process again making it tiring and demotivating. CK's happen, sometimes it can be demotivating yes but they should be held to the same standard for everyone, not one faction getting special treatment because they happen to have to write another application.

[HerpToTheDerp]

7 minutes ago, Ezrya said:

Lot's of players whether it be for a legal or illegal faction often go through a lengthy process to join and put hundreds of hours into their character development even once in. Illegal factions may not have an application and interview process but some can take longer than others to join depending on the faction so the same arguement applies to both legal and illegal characters. Just like you said It can also be frustrating to go through a long process of joining an illegal faction and spending a lot of time and dedication developing an interesting character just to have it permanantly erased and now having to go through the same process again making it tiring and demotivating. CK's happen, sometimes it can be demotivating yes but they should be held to the same standard for everyone, not one faction getting special treatment because they happen to have to write another application.

By that logic anyone should be able to be a gun supplier, lesses shouldn't exist, anyone should be able to get a taser, and everyone should be able to have a mansion. 

 

Unfortunately some stuff doesn't apply to everyone and usually for a good reason. I haven't seen a Illegal faction that you have to write an application to join and complete studying and training over the course of several weeks. But correct me if I'm wrong. 

 

Most factions require your character to hang around, build connections, and be of use to the group. You have to rebuild that connection.

 

Ranks in PD are based on 70% knowledge and 30% connections. It wastes time to start at square 1 in PD because of this and doesn't make sense as a P1 now acts and knows as much as a higher ranked officer and it would show. 

[Paranoid Cobra]

9 minutes ago, HerpToTheDerp said:

By that logic anyone should be able to be a gun supplier, lesses shouldn't exist, anyone should be able to get a taser, and everyone should be able to have a mansion. 

 

Unfortunately some stuff doesn't apply to everyone and usually for a good reason. I haven't seen a Illegal faction that you have to write an application to join and complete studying and training over the course of several weeks. But correct me if I'm wrong. 

 

Most factions require your character to hang around, build connections, and be of use to the group. You have to rebuild that connection.

 

Ranks in PD are based on 70% knowledge and 30% connections. It wastes time to start at square 1 in PD because of this and doesn't make sense as a P1 now acts and knows as much as a higher ranked officer and it would show. 

But this last bit that I just highlighted is literally what illegal RPers are being forced to do. Start from zero or you're breaking the rules.

IC'ly your character would need to get knowledge of who's dealing with who, the rank structure, the roles people play, etcetera.

 

Why is an exception made for PD? Because people choose to apply to it? I chose to join a faction and gave CK permissions. If I was to get CK'ed, I wouldn't be allowed to roleplay with these people and portray a -SIMILAR- character. A cop who gets CK'ed can go right back to being a cop.

 

I think this is the main issue for the people.

 

And I quote..

 

Each of your characters should be unique from your other characters. Making similar characters that have the same motivations, goals, objectives etc. is forbidden. This is to avoid players name changing to avoid consequences. Switching names between your characters is also forbidden.
 

Should a character be CKed or name changed, the character that comes after should have no connection to the previous character. Any character in a faction that is name changed or CKed must follow Faction Management's regulations for returning to the same faction. If a faction has no written agreement with Faction Management, then a returning character should be discussed with Faction Management. The purpose of this rule is to make sure CKs have an impact on factions.

 

If you are charged and your case goes to court you may not namechange until two week (14 days) after the completion of your court case. You must also ensure that any asset seizures are complied with before the namechange. 

 

Edited October 8, 2020 by Paranoid Cobra

[eTaylor]

22 minutes ago, HerpToTheDerp said:

I haven't seen a Illegal faction that you have to write an application to join and complete studying and training over the course of several weeks. But correct me if I'm wrong. 

 

Most factions require your character to hang around, build connections, and be of use to the group. You have to rebuild that connection.

Not only must you submit a whole backstory, you have to work up from the ground with every new character. You can't just slide in out of nowhere, even family members are regulated and all members are under constant scrutiny to perform up to standard. Your OOC position means nothing. Of course this differs from faction to faction, but it's more or less the standard. Character portrayal is center stage, you are required to develop your character correctly and through time. There are no shortcuts. I don't think anyone reasonably demands that PD actually wipes characters out of their faction, but making CKs a bit more consequential wouldn't be a bad thing. And if not, PD could be a whole lot more understanding towards what a CK means to other people.

23 minutes ago, HerpToTheDerp said:

Ranks in PD are based on 70% knowledge and 30% connections. It wastes time to start at square 1 in PD because of this and doesn't make sense as a P1 now acts and knows as much as a higher ranked officer and it would show. 

I'm sorry but this right here demonstrates such a great divide between "illegal" and PD RP in terms of thinking. If any gang came up with this mentality they'd be dragged through the mud and hanged for all to see. I'm not saying you should start as a P1, but if you do and you're not able to properly portray a character that holds that rank then that's a quality issue. I know for a fact that there are plenty of people in both PD and SD who have no problem what-so-ever roleplaying a character with a rank much lower than what they're used to. It comes back to what was said earlier:   

3 hours ago, Sacred said:

building up the ranks in a LEO faction is frankly more OOC than IC.

Why is this something that's actually accepted? I know law enforcement factions are much more personal in terms of OOC connections, in large part due to TeamSpeak and the way things generally work. But that shouldn't effect roleplay at all. Your rank should be IC, and is IC. I'm sure it wasn't intentional but all of these statements just make it sound like PD has absolutely no ability to separate IC from OOC things. I know for a fact that the people who CK in PD just come back with a different name and fall in line with the same patterns, doing the same roleplay, with the same people - like nothing ever happened.

 

Each of your characters should be unique from your other characters. Making similar characters that have the same motivations, goals, objectives etc. is forbidden. This is to avoid players name changing to avoid consequences. 

 

And not everyone chooses to be CK'ed, I would never choose to CK but I frankly don't have a choice if it does happen. And when it does I will loose far more than just a rank. I'll literally have nothing. If that's different for PD that's their thing, but then don't be dismissive about other people. Empathy goes a long way, and I absolutely understand that CKing sucks. But it's part of the roleplay, and myself and others just feel like PD is cheaping out. 

[onefortyseven]

I still don’t understand how some of you don’t get it - It’s not a server rule preventing you from joining the faction on a new character, it’s a faction rule and factions are free to enforce it if they want to (ideally), or completely ignore its existence and move on. Sure, you’re not allowed to roleplay your new character knowing your old one and you can’t just show up and say ‘Hey my brother John Doe was insert position, now that he’s dead I’ll be taking over.’ and be on your merry way, however, nobody’s stopping you from portraying a completely new character that got tied into the organization in some way or another. Well, I lied, there are people stopping you but it’s not the server management or administration, it’s your factions leadership/high command team. I’m fairly certain that if you do wish to resume from a similar rank you were previously, you’ll be able to find a way to do it that doesn’t break immersion and is realistic. Some motorcycle clubs have multiple ‘chapters’, some OCGs operate in more than just one city/area, some gangs are closely tied to and/or work with/under other larger sets (though I’m not 100% certain about this one, I never had much interest in gang RP and as such never researched it enough).

 

Now, the same thing can apply to law enforcement factions. People can roleplay their characters transferring from another station of their department, or they can roleplay transferring from a different agency altogether (although I’d opt out for taking more than just one rank drop if my old character held a somewhat high rank). Once again, they’re also free to leave the faction altogether when they’re CK’d, it’s just not a requirement, but then again, illegal factions can get rid of that requirement as well, if they want to.

 

Now, while continuing at a similar rank on a new character in illegal factions is possible, I, personally, wouldn’t do it in 95% of cases. Kinda contradictory to what I said at the beginning where it looked like I’m advocating it, I know. Illegal organizations work in a different way, their structure is not the same as your local street gangs. Officers can transfer from one station to another, from one department to another, even from another out-of-state department, however, that’s a long and difficult procedure and I’m going to go off-topic here to explain the ins and outs. To put it simply, in real life, you’re able to transfer from one station to another, and even from one department to another. Chances are, you can’t just ‘transfer’ to another gang, OCG or whatever like that, can you? So, yes - cops transferring (introducing a new character into the faction when they’re CK’d) is something that happens in real life, it’s not unrealistic and is in no way, shape, or form unfair, so I don’t see what’s the deal with it. Legal and law enforcement factions have their advantages and disadvantages, so do illegal factions. 

 

Lastly, doing what you’ve proposed would make more bad than good in the long run, for one too many reasons. Let me go ahead and list just a few of them;

 

1.) Once again, repeating myself - Cops can transfer from another station or even a whole different department to another in real life, while gang members, mob associates, and other individuals indulging in day-to-day illegal activities don’t have it that easy in real life, either. Even in the scenario where the actual head of the department (Chief of Police, Sheriff, Colonel, etc) dies/retires, a new one can be appointed or elected.

 

2.) There’s a chance that, if this was an actual rule, we’d start seeing an increase in sub-par roleplay coming from the officers and especially detectives. They wouldn’t want to lose what they’ve worked for weeks, months and some even years, possibly resulting in them making some undesirable moves & decisions in a scenario where their character is about to be killed, in turn resulting in a ruined scenario for everyone involved. It wouldn’t make people value their characters’ lives more, it’d make people pull borderline PG stunts and RP2WIN to avoid having to go through the recruitment process and work for their rank once again. Not to mention that people would most likely refuse to CK when it actually makes sense for their character to die, because, again, they wouldn’t really want to go through the whole recruitment process all over again.

 

3.) A Police Department is an essential faction on the server. Chances are, that if players had to start over and go through the training all over again when they’re killed, the majority would just leave the faction altogether and focus on doing something else. Imagine a server with ~500 players on during peak times having 5-10 cops online, and out of those 10, 7 are willing and going to pull borderline unrealistic shit to prevent their character from getting killed. Meanwhile, most illegal factions (no disrespect towards them, I absolutely love that we have a huge diversity in illegal factions and some roleplay they’re providing is very interesting & really high quality) come and go and they can’t impact the player base as much as one (or both) of the server’s law enforcement factions can.

 

4.) When you start a new character in an illegal faction, you’re getting into the roleplay you signed up for and enjoy right off, sure, obviously, you’re not as trusted and you can’t do a lot of things that you could on your original character, but you’re hit with roleplay opportunities and a chance to develop your character from the get-go. Meanwhile, people in the LSPD & LSSD have to go through a long (and boring) process of sending a PBA (which can take a couple of hours to get right), fixing that said PBA if there’s a slightest mistake present, taking interviews and reading over pages and pages of documentation just to be able to start their probationary period, and finally, then they get what they’ve signed up for -  a chance to develop a peace officer character. Not to mention that as your progress through the ranks, there’s more and more paperwork that you have to fill out, and guess what? That takes time away from what you could’ve spent in-game, roleplaying, and developing your character.

 

5.) Parts of the faction simply require specific people to hold a specific rank in order to keep the faction running. Let me ask you something - would you rather have someone who knows what they’re doing and how to run a division (from an OOC standpoint, their characters in-character personality, attributes, traits, flaws, and development don’t matter in this example), enforce high standards of realism/roleplay in the faction/their division, and similar, continue holding an important spot in the faction on a new character, or you’d rather have someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing appointed just because their predecessor got CK’d and had to start over as a PO-I?

 

6.) It’d literally be a punishment for people who decide to develop their character realistically and take a CK when there’s a good, legit reason for them to do so. You’ve CK’d because it was the only realistic way out of the situation you got into? Good job on developing your character realistically till the end, as a reward you get to re-apply and start over from scratch. I know that it’s similar to this in illegal factions, but - re-read what I said before, there’s no way to compare a law enforcement faction to a street gang when it comes to some things.

 

7.) LSPD, as a faction, has to have a number of people holding senior positions for it to function. Remove these people from the faction, and you’ll see it going into a dysfunctional state in no time.

 

8.) LSPD (and the LSSD) use a system where certain higher-ranking individuals can have one or two alternate characters hired into the faction, both for realism’s sake and to make things easier for them & others. How would we go about them? Let’s say that Commander John Doe’s alternate character, Police Officer III Jane Doe got CK’d. Should he be removed from the faction entirely because of that? Or should he get a free pass and continue on his commander character as if nothing happened and make a new field alt? If yes - where’s the fairness towards people who are <Sergeant II. If yes but he can’t make a new alt - they’re forced to patrol, get into foot pursuits, shootouts, and all kinds of stuff on their 45-50-something years old /management/ character, on daily basis. I don’t think that that’s realistic, is it now?

 

There is at least half a dozen other reasons people could come up with on why this is a bad idea. One could argue that I’m saying this because I’m apart of a law enforcement faction, but it’s not because of that, really. I just don’t find such a system to be suitable & I don’t really think that I’d bring anything beneficial to the faction or the server’s player base, it’s quite the contrary, it’d make people refuse to CK when they should, it’d make people turn robocoppish to keep their rank and their status in the faction, it’d leave the server without a good number of cop roleplayers, and in the end, it’s unnecessary.

 

Also, to add on to what I said before. When you CK (or get CK’d) as a cop, it’s not as simple as re-doing a few forum posts and rolling out the next morning, continuing where you left off on your old character. If you’re taking the faction seriously and if you’re there for actual character development and proper cop roleplay, instead of just treating the server as a police simulator, even though you’re still in the faction and you took just one rank drop. You’ll have to re-integrate yourself into friend circles, reestablish connections with other cops, regular players, and even illegal characters. If you want to RP a transfer from another department, you’re now seen as a complete newbie to the department, making it harder for you to do what I just mentioned. So no, as it stands right now, CKing as a cop is not just changing your name, re-doing a few forums posts, and continuing where you’ve left off.

 

To end it here; I’m a huge advocate of realistic character development and realistic character progression through the ranks, however, kicking someone out of the faction just because they made a right choice and decided to CK when that was the only option that makes sense, or making them go through the recruitment all over again is not a way to go. I’d personally have no issues with dropping to Police Officer II (lowest non-probationary rank) if I CK’d and decided to roleplay a new character that’s a transfer from a different department, as well as leaving all the divisions & units I was in, however, 95% of cop players on this server (and any other server, for that matter), wouldn’t want to go from a Lieutenant to a Police Officer I (probationary) or straight up be removed from the faction just because they got killed or they wanted to try developing a new character out. 

 

Law enforcement factions will always differ from illegal factions when it comes to some things. Both have their benefits and disadvantages. It’s fine as is.

 

 

 

Edited October 8, 2020 by Brian

[MickeyO]

PD is the largest gang on the server, the sad part is they’re backed by the staff majority of the time. A large faction in which anyone can join is a dangerous one because minimal standards are enforced and i’ve seen it on every server i’ve played on unfortunately.

[goddessoflife]

4 minutes ago, MickeyO said:

PD is the largest gang on the server, the sad part is they’re backed by the staff majority of the time. A large faction in which anyone can join is a dangerous one because minimal standards are enforced and i’ve seen it on every server i’ve played on unfortunately.

 

One comment to far, shouldn't be bashing on factions. Not the place for it. 

[MickeyO]

1 minute ago, goddessoflife said:

 

One comment to far, shouldn't be bashing on factions. Not the place for it. 

People don’t learn with civil discourse. That’s how the world works, how societies move, nevertheless. I’ll keep it off this thread.

[Selena]

15 minutes ago, DLimit said:

Or, maybe, it's because the admins are primary witnesses to these rule infractions, resulting in them using their live-observations to form a conclusion on one's actions? Even then, I've witnessed a lot of reports filed against players by LSPD members when admins were NOT present.

This is something to keep in mind, just because some admins, like myself, is in PD doesn't mean we will side with them. I've banned, ajailed and warned PD members, as their FM handler it's something that you need to be unbiased about. If you think an admin's being biased you can issue a staff report and get a second opinion from Management.

 

That being said, this topic isn't supposed to bash the faction so let's keep it on topic.