Law & Order - GTA World Edition (Judiciary Faction Q&A Stuff)

[Ink]

Just now, Bospy said:

Someone losing their character over them PKing a character is not something suitable for this server. Players will not have any incentive to surrender to law enforcement and roleplay cooperation after they've committed heinous crimes if it means they'll be basically CK'd. A situation like this already took place recently. A player killed two people who weren't permanently killed and immediately went back to roleplaying. The player was nearly CK'd even though his victims were in the streets, doing the same things they had been doing prior to their roleplayed, legitimate deaths.

 

If you have a situation where only criminals are at risk of CK for crimes, then you will encourage them to opt to shoot their way out of arrest or find another way to die. Criminal roleplay on this server is already difficult enough to discover, if you hamstring it any more, you discourage it.

 

I say this as a member of illegal FM, we don't approve CKs on LEOs for doing their jobs, nor would we approve CKs on prosecutors or witnesses unless it involved an illegal party at risk of losing their life or a faction shutting down.

 

This is a good reply from two months ago that generally summarizes my thoughts.

 

It really feels like there's a "heads I win tails you lose" sort of argument here. I see in many threads across this community illegal roleplayers telling legal roleplayers "it's an IC issue, take it IC" whenever the question of poor enforcement is presented. In this thread, when it's pointed out that criminals have it way too easy and that the consequences on this server are much more heavy on legal roleplayers, we get the "woah woah woah there are you OOCly trying to cripple illegal RP?"

I'm trying to cripple bad criminal roleplay. You can roleplay a criminal character without walking around with a gun in your ass at all times. You can roleplay a criminal character without every other roleplay conflict ending up with positioning hitsquads to kidnap and murder. You can roleplay a criminal character without extorting legal businesses . There is so much opportunity for criminal roleplay that doesn't involve you ending up in a court case with full evidence that you're planning an assassination of a high profile corporate executive on behest of a mafia family, or without escaping from the police and shooting pistols off of the back of a bike into the windshield of a government agent. 

These sort of moments are supposed to mean something. These sort of moments are supposed to have narrative weight. Do you know how exhausting it is as a legal roleplayer to constantly have to hear about your friends experiencing murders next to them? How all of my character's friends have been robbed multiple times at gunpoint in public places? How all of my character's business owning friends have dealt with multiple mafia families trying to strongarm them? How can I continue to "heavily RP" that this city is anything but a wretched hive of scum and villainy and a complete laweless wasteland? Why would any reasonable character want to keep living in Los Santos when it's a city where cops are shot by the dozens every week, where bodies pile up by the hundreds in a week, where legal businesses get extorted by every crime family, and there is no way for citizens to get any relief?

 

We are told at every turn that this is a heavy roleplay server, but it feels like the people who get enforced most heavily to be compliant with the "heavy" standard are legal roleplayers. Legal roleplayers are inundated with paperwork whether they're applying for business permits, meeting fire safety guidelines, or keeping a business alive. LEO roleplayers need to build casefiles which require literally DOZENS of real life hours of time invested to catalogue and document every aspect of an RP by criminals which took 5-10 minutes to do. Judicial roleplayers are behooved to participate in sprawling weeks-long court cases requiring intense OOC research and high-level argumentation.

Criminals meanwhile can run away from police and shoot at them and only get a minor slap on the wrists. If a legal roleplayer misuses his or her legal gun, or even so much as fails to tell a police officer they have one during a traffic stop, they lose the ability to carry that gun for SIX REAL LIFE MONTHS. Let that sink in! If a criminal roleplayer gets into a shootout with the police and dies, they lose 20k and have a new gun the next freaking day. 

 

Legal roleplayers have barely any IC recourse to respond to criminal aggression. In the real world, criminals live in fear of involving people in their crimes and of creating evidence which will implicate themselves. Successful criminals (as opposed to the ones who end up dead or in prison barely into their 20s if they're lucky) obsess over finding the right moment to do a crime so as to avoid ending up in a compromising position. Real life criminals would be stupid to go after influential civilians because the odds of them ending up behind bars are almost guaranteed, and them applying further violent pressure would be suicidal for their freedom. 

 

Criminal roleplayers, however, are able to bully their way through any roleplay they want and "win" especially when it's against realistic legal characters because all they need to do is load up a car with four dudes in masks, drive over, and do a hit-and-run assassination in the middle of a busy street. Haha! PK'd! They'll post screenshots of that in their faction thread showing off how badass, deadly, dangerous, and cunning they are, and how you, the legal roleplayer, should have thought twice before daring to scratch their ego. 

Don't get me wrong, I have a ton of respect for excellent criminal roleplayers, and I adore well-written portrayals of the seedier sides of life. This server is full of really talented and passionate roleplayers who weave amazing narratives. They are not the ones I'm targeting with this because they're not the ones treating this like a video game where their characters solve every problem by grabbing a gun and blowing some brains out. They're not the ones who shove their way into legal roleplayers' storylines and wave their proverbial dicks around treating them like doormats, ATMs, or in the disturbing case of one faction recently as literal toilets. 

 

Yes, criminal roleplay is important. But so is legal roleplay. So is business roleplay. So is government roleplay. These are the things which take this from being a medium-light cops and robbers roleplay server and elevate it to being a heavy roleplay community with a leaving and breathing world. And the standard of "heavy roleplay" should go across the board. If every single person wants to roleplay a bloodthirsty ruthless badass who has no compunctions against kidnapping and murder, then it loses all meaning and suddenly this heavy roleplay community loses any credibility of portraying any sort of realism. You want your character to be a narco demon? Get ready to deal with the consequences when they're caught. That should be part of your character's story arc, either they're clever enough to make their moves at the right time, or they will go out in a blaze of glory and end up dead or in jail. 

 

[Serendipity]

44 minutes ago, Bospy said:

Someone losing their character over them PKing a character is not something suitable for this server. Players will not have any incentive to surrender to law enforcement and roleplay cooperation after they've committed heinous crimes if it means they'll be basically CK'd. A situation like this already took place recently. A player killed two people who weren't permanently killed and immediately went back to roleplaying. The player was nearly CK'd even though his victims were in the streets, doing the same things they had been doing prior to their roleplayed, legitimate deaths.

 

If you have a situation where only criminals are at risk of CK for crimes, then you will encourage them to opt to shoot their way out of arrest or find another way to die. Criminal roleplay on this server is already difficult enough to discover, if you hamstring it any more, you discourage it.

 

I say this as a member of illegal FM, we don't approve CKs on LEOs for doing their jobs, nor would we approve CKs on prosecutors or witnesses unless it involved an illegal party at risk of losing their life or a faction shutting down.

 

This is a good reply from two months ago that generally summarizes my thoughts.

Hi, I’m the character behind the survivor of the attack you detailed, and you couldn’t be more wrong with your take on things. The perpetrator of the double homicide carried out his act due to no other reason than that the SD happened to be patrolling the area he was about to commit robbery/assault at. Somehow this minor incident, that literally followed no prosecution on his end, was enough for him to break into a house in Mirror Park and commit double murder and attempt to make it a triple murder. It’s an extremely trivial reason to carry out such a heinous, indefensible act that would get prosecuted to the fullest extent in the U.S. 
 

Upon calling the cops, I didn’t even give a detailed description of him. I said ”homosexual drug dealer,” not ”member of [the gang he was a member of]” out of courtesy. My character wouldn’t be able to recognize the nuances of different gang members. The murderer here in question came back to the scene THREE TIMES and that’s how he was caught. Sure, no one wants to take away anyone’s character, but at what point do you have to face the IC consequences for your IC actions? If you come back to the scene of the murder thrice instead of laying low, why should you receive leniency? If you didn’t even role-play the method you used to break into the house, leaving you liable for forensic evidence against you, why should you get off scott free? ”IC actions have IC consequences,” I recall an admin saying.

 

Following that day, I have not engaged in any role-play except a detailed mental breakdown (brought on by the whole ordeal) and extensive witness protection. The other victim actually had no involvement in the event that prompted for the double homicide to occur, so why should she have to stop her role-play? She was collateral damage. The second murdered person has also not returned to regular programming, opting to wait till the conclusion of the murderer’s trial. Out of courtesy.

 

And following on that, I have no plans to RP as I had before, because of fear of IC retribution. If the admin stance is that no one should lose their character, then I sure hope that any CK application made against my character for co-operating with the police is rendered null, because the three of us had no intention of getting entangled in a situation where we’d be victims of murder.

 

In the end, the only losers in this situation are the SD detectives who put in great work and provided a foolproof case, and myself, because my character can’t be a public figure anymore. Her getting murdered for talking to the police is inevitable. The murderer is ostensibly going to be granted parole and RP as he did before.

[Midsummer Night's Dream]

It seems Ink is saying the pendulum has swung too far in one direction.  And I agree.  There needs to be a balance; on the one hand, we need fair punishment which reasonably fits the crime, but, on the other hand, we should avoid seriously stifling criminal roleplay. 
 

The issue in this particular case seems to be the lack of statutory minimum penalty for offences on which a person is convicted.  As in the real world, the issue when a penalty does not fit the crime can be either: the absence of a minimum; minimum that is too low; or a minimum that is too high.  These are policy issues that can be fixed with policy; and, of course, they won’t please everyone as there is always a “too soft” and “too harsh” camp. 
 

Policy changes can also abolish awarding credit-for-time-served.  While adhering to this device may be realistic, it seems to have caused the pendulum to swing too far.

 

What we don’t need are hard time limits on trial proceedings.  As I previously said,  the ten-day hard limit was imposed on impulse, was not helpful and was being ignored anyhow — and continues to be ignored.  A significant source of issue is the imbalance between constitutional entitlements and the need for timely resolution which also minimizes uncertainty.  Criminal court here sometimes try to control time, and address this imbalance, by issuing what is called in civil proceedings a “summary judgment;” but in the criminal court, these are an alien concept inconsistent with the fundamentals entitlements we give to all criminal defendants.  Summarily convicting criminal defendants — as summary judgments do — has been rejected and in disuse in the United States for in the neighbourhood of 150 years.  (That remains the case only if we ignore the outliers that are the Guantanamo cases in the notorious military tribunals in the early 2000s; those were a serious and unprincipled departure from long-standing constitutional commands).

 

Summary judgments and hard time limits are not how to hedge the time it takes for a proceeding to run its course.  Both of them invite serious problems in the realism department.  What we need most is mandatory and thorough training for those on the other side of the bar which divides the courtroom.  This is something for which I’ve been calling for a long time and, regrettably, which saw a LFM-sanctioned removal from the faction.  Training will both protect guarantees and keep trials at a reasonable length. 
 

 

 

Edited August 11, 2020 by Midsummer Night's Dream

[rootless cosmopolitan]

26 minutes ago, Serendipity said:

Hi, I’m the character behind the survivor of the attack you detailed, and you couldn’t be more wrong with your take on things. The perpetrator of the double homicide carried out his act due to no other reason than that the SD happened to be patrolling the area he was about to commit robbery/assault at. Somehow this minor incident, that literally followed no prosecution on his end, was enough for him to break into a house in Mirror Park and commit double murder and attempt to make it a triple murder. It’s an extremely trivial reason to carry out such a heinous, indefensible act that would get prosecuted to the fullest extent in the U.S. 
 

Upon calling the cops, I didn’t even give a detailed description of him. I said ”homosexual drug dealer,” not ”member of [the gang he was a member of]” out of courtesy. My character wouldn’t be able to recognize the nuances of different gang members. The murderer here in question came back to the scene THREE TIMES and that’s how he was caught. Sure, no one wants to take away anyone’s character, but at what point do you have to face the IC consequences for your IC actions? If you come back to the scene of the murder thrice instead of laying low, why should you receive leniency? If you didn’t even role-play the method you used to break into the house, leaving you liable for forensic evidence against you, why should you get off scott free? ”IC actions have IC consequences,” I recall an admin saying.

 

Following that day, I have not engaged in any role-play except a detailed mental breakdown (brought on by the whole ordeal) and extensive witness protection. The other victim actually had no involvement in the event that prompted for the double homicide to occur, so why should she have to stop her role-play? She was collateral damage. The second murdered person has also not returned to regular programming, opting to wait till the conclusion of the murderer’s trial. Out of courtesy.

 

And following on that, I have no plans to RP as I had before, because of fear of IC retribution. If the admin stance is that no one should lose their character, then I sure hope that any CK application made against my character for co-operating with the police is rendered null, because the three of us had no intention of getting entangled in a situation where we’d be victims of murder.

 

In the end, the only losers in this situation are the SD detectives who put in great work and provided a foolproof case, and myself, because my character can’t be a public figure anymore. Her getting murdered for talking to the police is inevitable. The murderer is ostensibly going to be granted parole and RP as he did before.

 

Actions must have consequences. If you have the balls to role-play murdering three people, you should have the balls to also role-play spending the rest of your character's life in a jail cell when your character gets caught.

Edited August 11, 2020 by rootless cosmopolitan

[Bospy]

5 hours ago, Ink said:

It really feels like there's a "heads I win tails you lose" sort of argument here. I see in many threads across this community illegal roleplayers telling legal roleplayers "it's an IC issue, take it IC" whenever the question of poor enforcement is presented. In this thread, when it's pointed out that criminals have it way too easy and that the consequences on this server are much more heavy on legal roleplayers, we get the "woah woah woah there are you OOCly trying to cripple illegal RP?"

 

I'm trying to cripple bad criminal roleplay. You can roleplay a criminal character without walking around with a gun in your ass at all times. You can roleplay a criminal character without every other roleplay conflict ending up with positioning hitsquads to kidnap and murder. You can roleplay a criminal character without extorting legal businesses . There is so much opportunity for criminal roleplay that doesn't involve you ending up in a court case with full evidence that you're planning an assassination of a high profile corporate executive on behest of a mafia family, or without escaping from the police and shooting pistols off of the back of a bike into the windshield of a government agent. 

I'm a legal roleplayer. Three out of four of my character slots are devoted towards the Sheriff's Department. While you have a very noble goal, I'm telling you that increasing the weight of certain crimes will do a massive disservice towards the good criminal roleplayers. I am not a fan of massive hit squads or shitty extortions, or shooting at cops just because they're chasing you. In terms of your point about full cases falling flat, this is unfortunately very much part of our real life political atmosphere in many liberal locales. Unlike many people's beliefs, it is actually exceedingly rare for a trial to even get to the bench or jury. Only 2% of all US trials ever go to a jury. Before then, there's plea bargains. But plea bargains are also a rather small percentage compared to the cases which are dropped, diverted to programs, or thrown out by an overloaded DA.

 

There was a police officer in my state who was killed by a man who had something to the tune of 300 priors. When you hear about a criminal on this server getting off easy on some heavy charges, consider it from the perspective of a Californian citizen when a gang member leaves prison because he doesn't meet three-strike clauses even if he committed a serious crime. I have a personal anecdote - someone shot a close family member of mine five times, twice in the lungs. The person who shot him is probably only going to spend five years in prison at most.

 

5 hours ago, Ink said:

If a criminal roleplayer gets into a shootout with the police and dies, they lose 20k and have a new gun the next freaking day. 

If a police officer or sheriff's deputy does something stupid and dies in a shootout, they have a new gun immediately upon spawning and can go chase bad guys. Illegal roleplayers do not have ready access to new weapons and ammunition like you might think. I invite you to create a criminal character and try to purchase an illegal firearm. This is a tall order, even on an experienced gang member's behalf. I roleplayed in the illegal atmosphere on this server on multiple different occasions and found myself struggling to find switchblades.

 

Criminal roleplay is difficult. It is incredibly difficult. If you are used to being spoonfed scenes (e.g. law enforcement) or used to casual scenes (legal) then entering criminal roleplay will not be easy for you. Many times, you are alone. You need to learn how to create your own roleplay through confrontation. So let's say you want to commit a crime. Most people aren't going to imagine themselves engaging in criminal activity, so it's hard to portray that on a character. Sure, portraying a status offense (e.g. drug usage) is relatively easy. But robbing somebody is hard. Killing someone innocent is hard. You need to arrange logistics, you need to keep a watchful eye for witnesses.

 

My personal standard is this: if you are a legal roleplayer and have qualms with some aspect of criminal roleplay on this server, I invite you to create a criminal character. Doesn't matter their ethnicity. Make a criminal. Your objective is solely to mug someone successfully AND to get away with it. It's an exercise. It's going to be a lot more difficult than you might think right now.

 

5 hours ago, Ink said:

These sort of moments are supposed to mean something. These sort of moments are supposed to have narrative weight. Do you know how exhausting it is as a legal roleplayer to constantly have to hear about your friends experiencing murders next to them? How all of my character's friends have been robbed multiple times at gunpoint in public places? How all of my character's business owning friends have dealt with multiple mafia families trying to strongarm them? How can I continue to "heavily RP" that this city is anything but a wretched hive of scum and villainy and a complete laweless wasteland? Why would any reasonable character want to keep living in Los Santos when it's a city where cops are shot by the dozens every week, where bodies pile up by the hundreds in a week, where legal businesses get extorted by every crime family, and there is no way for citizens to get any relief?

Yes, I was the Sheriff and I'm still advising the current Sheriff. I much prefer legal roleplay to criminal roleplay because it's much easier for me to fit in. Calling the city a lawless wasteland is sort of a stretch. LEO roleplayers barely stumble across crimes in progress as it is. Criminal roleplay is very much in an infantile state at this community. There are no long-term alliances that have been brokered, no historical struggles that occupied the city's mind for years, no large RICO-style shutdowns. The only thing that comes to mind if the collapse of the Jamestown Mafia.

 

My character's arrests came almost purely from traffic stops that I initiated. Some legal roleplayers are not comfortable with traffic stops or self-initiated scenes because they fear confrontation on an OOC level. I shy away from that. I've had criminal roleplayers stop and cooperate with me with TEC-9s in their waistband. This isn't a magical event - if you roleplay realistically, criminals will tend to cooperate.

 

Criminal roleplay is not nearly as organized on our server as other servers I've participated in. We do not have a cops v. robbers atmosphere, a massive middle line of legal roleplayers exists and probably will never be threatened. In fact, I think this server is ripe for massive criminal roleplay growth as other communities perish. There's tons of victims and untouched opportunities waiting for a solid criminal faction to pop up. Shitty criminal RP absolutely exists and fills that vacuum in the meantime, but it's illegal FM's job to police that. If you witness shitty criminal RP, better to report it to us than to simply push forward "policies" which would degrade quality roleplay.

 

5 hours ago, Ink said:

LEO roleplayers need to build casefiles which require literally DOZENS of real life hours of time invested to catalogue and document every aspect of an RP by criminals which took 5-10 minutes to do. Judicial roleplayers are behooved to participate in sprawling weeks-long court cases requiring intense OOC research and high-level argumentation.

These are not requirements, merely standards people set for themselves. As a cop I arrested tons of people and filled out paperwork pretty lazily and still managed to get them to plead guilty. Nobody needs to do anything. The issue is you're looking at this from the perspective of winners and losers. A criminal roleplayer doesn't win when he murders somebody. A cop doesn't win when he catches a criminal. If you establish win and lose conditions, then you're playing to win. Your character wants to catch bad guys, but you shouldn't want to catch bad guys yourself. That'll cloud your judgement.

 

I never concerned myself with "winning" cases or locking bad guys up. I didn't give a shit if a case I had got thrown out. I literally roleplayed a lazy Lieutenant who didn't give a shit, and I'll continue to roleplay that. My arrest records are the bare minimum. I've had someone I arrested who was participating in an active shooter incident get let go because my character was declared a hostile witness. I don't give a shit, it's amusing to me. Rather than view the criminal slipping away as some sort of obstacle, view it from their perspective. These procedural fuckups happen literally all the time.

 

5 hours ago, Ink said:

In the real world, criminals live in fear of involving people in their crimes and of creating evidence which will implicate themselves.

This doesn't apply to a place like Los Angeles. Gangs of 1000+ people exist in Los Angeles, and those people all are pretty much actively engaged in commercial drug trafficking. I can speak on this with authority because I used to live there. The majority of crimes go undetected in a community like Los Angeles. Massive criminal enterprises exist in Los Angeles, and in many cases are under the umbrella of even larger and more dangerous enterprises in prison with their tendrils extended into the streets. This is a unique problem. Most communities in the United States do not face the same organized criminal enterprises that LA does, outside of maybe LCN on the East Coast, but even then LCN was more involved in white-collar issues.

 

5 hours ago, Ink said:

Real life criminals would be stupid to go after influential civilians because the odds of them ending up behind bars are almost guaranteed, and them applying further violent pressure would be suicidal for their freedom. 

Criminals going after influential people is such a large problem in Los Angeles that the LASD has a detail devoted to it called the Robbery-Burglary detail in the Major Crimes Bureau. Criminal gangs have been documented to engage in home invasions in wealthy neighborhoods while driving high-end vehicles to blend in. This is not isolated - multiple gangs have engaged in this across ethnic and racial lines.

 

Criminals go after influential people on a consistent basis in real life. Of course, we can't really represent the ratio of criminals to civilians, but if you live somewhere with a gang problem, there is a non-zero probably of you possibly being victimized.

 

While many of them do end up behind bars, it's a risk versus reward factor. Many criminals are stupid. They aren't going to think about the long-term consequences of their actions when they're pumped on methamphetamine or zoned out due to heroin. Their low intelligence coupled with their prolific drug use, especially among gang members, will drive them to commit "stupid crime" like chasing influential civilians.

5 hours ago, Ink said:

Criminal roleplayers, however, are able to bully their way through any roleplay they want and "win" especially when it's against realistic legal characters because all they need to do is load up a car with four dudes in masks, drive over, and do a hit-and-run assassination in the middle of a busy street. Haha! PK'd! They'll post screenshots of that in their faction thread showing off how badass, deadly, dangerous, and cunning they are, and how you, the legal roleplayer, should have thought twice before daring to scratch their ego. 

This is very much an assumption you've made about the attitudes of the majority. Most serious criminal roleplayers look down on people like this.

 

5 hours ago, Ink said:

They're not the ones who shove their way into legal roleplayers' storylines and wave their proverbial dicks around treating them like doormats, ATMs, or in the disturbing case of one faction recently as literal toilets. 

In terms of an OOC perspective, this isn't proper or acceptable. I agree with you here. People that mix their character's desires with their own are stupid. Criminal roleplayers who view legal roleplay in this manner are metagamers and unable to accurately portray their character.

 

In terms of IC portrayal, it's perfectly reasonable for a criminal to view each victim as an opportunity.

5 hours ago, Ink said:

Yes, criminal roleplay is important. But so is legal roleplay. So is business roleplay. So is government roleplay. These are the things which take this from being a medium-light cops and robbers roleplay server and elevate it to being a heavy roleplay community with a leaving and breathing world. And the standard of "heavy roleplay" should go across the board. If every single person wants to roleplay a bloodthirsty ruthless badass who has no compunctions against kidnapping and murder, then it loses all meaning and suddenly this heavy roleplay community loses any credibility of portraying any sort of realism. You want your character to be a narco demon? Get ready to deal with the consequences when they're caught. That should be part of your character's story arc, either they're clever enough to make their moves at the right time, or they will go out in a blaze of glory and end up dead or in jail. 

If you enforce a standard like this, then any time an innocent character is victimized, you'd need to enforce the same standard for them. Someone gets PK'd for witnessing a crime? Maybe that's a CK now. You get robbed and they shoot your kneecap? You need to roleplay being a cripple permanently.

 

Sometimes we need to extend our disbelief to ignore certain scenes our characters participate in. This is one of those instances. Most criminal roleplayers do not take their character's rapsheet super seriously if they kill some random person for an indiscretion. Most LEO roleplayers are not going to roleplay having been shot twenty times. Crime is obviously going to take place at a horrendously inflated rate in our fictional version of Los Angeles. We have to accept that, or we could just authorize a total of maybe 10 criminal characters, 8 of which are just drug users.

 

4 hours ago, Serendipity said:

Following that day, I have not engaged in any role-play except a detailed mental breakdown (brought on by the whole ordeal) and extensive witness protection. The other victim actually had no involvement in the event that prompted for the double homicide to occur, so why should she have to stop her role-play? She was collateral damage. The second murdered person has also not returned to regular programming, opting to wait till the conclusion of the murderer’s trial. Out of courtesy.

 

These are choices you made, they weren't forced on you. The player who was arrested was forced to seriously consider leaving the community.

 

At the end of the day, this is JSA's thread. I don't want to pollute it. But I personally stand against any sentencing increase beyond what we currently have.

 

4 hours ago, Serendipity said:

In the end, the only losers in this situation are the SD detectives who put in great work and provided a foolproof case, and myself, because my character can’t be a public figure anymore. Her getting murdered for talking to the police is inevitable. The murderer is ostensibly going to be granted parole and RP as he did before.

Those Sheriff's Detectives were disappointed on an OOC level because the illegal roleplayer was considering leaving the community and was forced to essentially accept a CK. They enjoyed the scene on an IC basis and had no complaints with the court process OUTSIDE of the incredibly harsh sentencing, essentially forcing him to lose his character.

 

I am incredibly proud of them for this.

 

Once again, I am almost purely a legal roleplayer. I simply have a different perspective on this issue. Personally, I want MORE crime. It means more fun for me as a law enforcement roleplayer.

Edited August 12, 2020 by Bospy

[Serendipity]

@Bospy How can you chastise me (wrongly, by the way) for ”returning to normal role-play” following the incident and justify that as the reason for parole eligibility, but then tell me it’s my choice to role-play the consequences of acting as the sole survivor and key witness to this case?

 

That person made a choice too. He neglected to think his actions through, for himself and his character. He has a new lease on life, while I don’t, because I ”chose” to role-play accordingly. OK. I hope this precedent of leniency for actions this severe is used in the future. I’d hate for anyone else senselessly going for a triple murder to lose their character.

Edited August 12, 2020 by Serendipity

[Bospy]

8 minutes ago, Serendipity said:

@Bospy How can you chastise me (wrongly, by the way) for ”returning to normal role-play” following the incident and justify that as the reason for parole eligibility, but then tell me it’s my choice to role-play the consequences of acting as the sole survivor and key witness to this case?

 

That person made a choice too. He neglected to think his actions through, for himself and his character. He has a new lease on life, while I don’t, because I ”chose” to role-play accordingly. OK. I hope this precedent of leniency for actions this severe is used in the future. I’d hate for anyone else senselessly going for a triple murder to lose their character.

 

I didn't chastise you at all. It's your decision and your responsibility how you choose to portray your character. I'm not mandated to force you to correct that until it approaches something unreasonable.

 

I'm not here to set a precedent either. That's not my job. I'm just here talking about my opinion.

 

Those two players who were killed were not CK'd. They're going to go back to roleplaying their characters as soon as the judgement is issued. They'd be metagaming if they acknowledged that they died on any sort of IC basis. So where does that leave us? Either they CK so that our criminal buddy CKs too, or he should be let out just as they continue to RP their characters with no consequence. Obviously, this means your character wouldn't be eligible for CK either. That's my frank opinion.

 

I care little for how my opinion is viewed either way. I'm expressing what I think will happen if punishments are increased. Criminal roleplay will be threatened, more people will be enticed to shoot themselves out of interesting roleplay, and law enforcement roleplay will suffer because there will be no bad guys to chase.

Edited August 12, 2020 by Bospy

[Serendipity]

6 minutes ago, Bospy said:

 

I didn't chastise you at all. It's your decision and your responsibility how you choose to portray your character. I'm not mandated to force you to correct that until it approaches something unreasonable.

 

I'm not here to set a precedent either. That's not my job. I'm just here talking about my opinion.

 

Those two players who were killed were not CK'd.

Yes, you did. You tried to shift the blame from the person at hand and mitigate his wrongdoing, by erroneously coming to the conclusion that we’d all returned to go about our ways like usual. 
 

You’re right. It’s my responsibility to role-play my character accordingly. It’s also the murderer’s responsibility to, you know, maybe not try to commit triple homicide if they aren’t ready to face what lies as a consequence for it. I’m starting to feel like I should’ve just died at the scene and let myself be PKed.

 

That’ll be all from me.

Edited August 12, 2020 by Serendipity

[Bospy]

15 minutes ago, Serendipity said:

Yes, you did. You tried to shift the blame from the person at hand and mitigate his wrongdoing, by somehow coming to the conclusion that we’d all returned to go about our ways like usual. 
 

You’re right. It’s my responsibility to role-play my character accordingly. It’s also the murderer’s responsibility to, you know, maybe not try to commit triple homicide if they aren’t ready to face what lies as a consequence for it. I’m starting to feel like I should’ve just died at the scene and let myself be PKed.

 

That’ll be all from me.

 

What wrongdoing? What rule did he break on any OOC level? How am I shifting blame in any way? How did the player harm you on any personal out-of-character basis? You have to disconnect his character from the player. His character committed a triple homicide, but the players who he killed chose to PK. Why should his character then be CK'd from that situation? It's an unfair double standard. He is being forced permanently close that character's storyline when the storylines of his victims continue without impediment (except for you voluntarily choosing to incorporate it). It is commendable you're choosing to roleplay this as part of your character's storyline, but your friends won't, because they died. He probably wouldn't incorporate this into his storyline at all, because it's an inconsequential murder, not on an enemy. I would understand your position more if the players involved chose to CK.

 

The murderer readily admitted to us on an OOC level his character would not have cooperated whatsoever if he knew what the punishment would be. He would've ran, fought, and most probably shot to kill cops to avoid capture and CK. He would've just died. Once again, my point is if you increase punishments, it simply means more criminals are going to shoot their way out of interactions with LEOs. That's my sole point of contention here. I'm not arguing in favor of any one party or against them. This has widespread implications. Criminal roleplayers, especially the shitty ones, will shoot their way out of unfavorable interactions. It means they're more apt to kill your legal character for some tiny indiscretion. It means the gun is used more often than words. Increasing IC punishments means the players will avoid the court system like the plague.

 

Instead, we get engaging roleplay where he admits to committing a murder, guides detectives to a body, and the murders are resolved in 22 hours. You get to participate in a court case and incorporate in your character's storyline that two of her random friends died. Nobody would blink twice when you move on from that and interact with your two friends on a regular basis, just as nobody is going to blink when he's released from prison. If he goes around CONSISTENTLY committing triple homicides and risking his character like this, then it approaches a roleplay quality issue. Instead, he's going to be on parole for the rest of his character's existence. That's a heavy constraint.

 

You're voluntarily incorporating it into a storyline, which like I said is commendable. But your friends literally cannot incorporate this event into their character's storyline at all, because doing so would violate the rules. They were PK'd, they must treat it as a new life.

 

 

 

Edited August 12, 2020 by Bospy

[why so]

I'll agree with Bospy here. We shouldn't push for harsher punishments. I fear any more further and it would practically kill the criminal scene. As Bospy has already mentioned, roleplaying a criminal is hard, and it's especially harder on this server. No server has ever been this stringent when it comes down to punishing criminal activity.   

 

7 hours ago, Ink said:

Right now, the legal system lacks any and all teeth.

It doesn't. A system which lacks any and all teeth would be one currently found in many other communities where you could commit a triple murder, serve a 14 hour in-game sentence and get released with little to no repercussion at all. In fact, I believe GTA W has the only functioning legal system which gives us the ability to put repeated offenders and offenders of heinous crimes behind bars forever. I doubt you can name one server that has that. 

 

4 minutes ago, Serendipity said:

It’s also the murderer’s responsibility to, you know, maybe not try to commit triple homicide if they aren’t ready to face what lies as a consequence for it

I guess life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after two months isn't a 'consequence' in your eyes. Baring in mind that this individual may very well never be granted parole because he's merely eligible and that's for something for the parole board to grant. 

 

2 minutes ago, Serendipity said:

I’m starting to feel like I should’ve just died at the scene and let myself be PKed.

Goes both ways. Do you think the individual that was handed a life imprisonment sentence doesn't feel like they should have let their character be PKed when the cops were apprehending him?