Scale down the mechanic pay.

[nelsondx]

32 minutes ago, Asthaerya said:

Well, earning 30-80k a shift makes no sense either. It's simply not realistic, and that's what this server wants to be about. 
So the prices of the components should be raised by a little, and the percentage the mechanics get drastically lowered.

Going to your bartending point. I have earnt upwards to 20k being a bartender, despite the base pay being minimal(3k when my character was working VIBE), a bartender can easily earn very very well, I managed to bag a Drafter with a bartending job...

Now to the mechanic point. I work for a shop ICly and while I will admit I can earn a good buck, the costs of maintaining said garage are expensive. The owner of the garage I work at keeps 80% of the money customers pay, 10%-20%(if I'm alone) goes to me. However, while he does keep 80%, 60% of that money goes for stock, so his only profit is..20% of those 80%(pardon if I'm being confusing). 

The only suggestion I would have is lower the stock prices or make parts cheaper. Having bad mechanic RPers is natural, like in the pharmacy you have everything, but I sort of understand why some people rush it(I personally don't unless I have to leave), you have 3-4 people waiting in line, if you're gonna spend upwards to 10 mins in a car..the last person will probably spend nearly an hour waiting. I'm not defending poor RP I'm just saying I understand why people don't do highly detailed 10 minutes+ RP. The solution to poor mechanic RP is simple, report it and surely an admin will handle. If you see piss poor RP and you don't report it? Then nothing is gonna be done about it.

 

EDIT: Forgot to mention. Customers also tip mechanics quite well, for example I got tipped at least 20k today. I got 5k tips, 3k, 1k, and I had a lot of customers today. 

Edited January 15, 2020 by nelsondx

[St3fan[NL]]

Eventually it is the owners who decide how much the employees get. If you have 3 mechanics on duty, and someone buys an upgrade worth 5k.
A good business owner takes atleast 2.5k as thats for the component price they need to pay to restock. The other 2.5k gets split among all other employees if the percentage is set at 50%, meaning all onduty employees get $833. But that means an owner earns nothing, so most garages have it set to 30-40% making it even less that the mechanic gets.

They need to properly RP the upgrades and tunes, and if not you can report them. They need to put effort into their roleplay.

[MikeyMike]

I think you're tackling the wrong issue here. It's not about how much money you make, it's how you make it and the time limit under which you make it. People are saying I should detail RP and spend 5+ minutes RPing a car, well guess what. While I'm doing that there's 5 cars behind me waiting to get new engine, new roof, new suspension, new transmission, new brakes, new wheels, etc. And I'm supposed to RP that under a time limit, because the last guy to come to the garage is gonna end up spending hours there. Hours that he could've spent RPing elsewhere. I think the issue here is the system that's created where the mechanic shop is treated like a drive-thru of car parts. You drive in, get your little catalog and fully modify your car from top to bottom and get out 10 minutes later with a fully tuned machine. This is wrong, and if anything, your suggestion should be reworking the mechanic shops to a more realistic setting. Walking into a garage, telling the mechanics what you want done to your car and the mechanics telling you how long that will take i.e. come back tomorrow or in 3 IG hours. That way, there's enough time to RP even the slightest details needed to make everything seem realistic. Because the way the system is currently set up, I feel like there's a fire burning under my ass every time I fix up a car whose owner decided it would be a good idea to fully deck out the car with 15+ mods for me to RP while there are literally five other guys behind him waiting to do the same.

[Engelbert]

This issue goes both ways. Mechanic and client as well. Rates are set by the owner of course, so it is up to them. Garages shouldn't work like drive thrus. That's the reason why people can earn such money there. Cause they spend 5-10 minutes per car regardless of the work done. But this also goes on client's account, cause they are mostly impatient. They maybe bought a brand new stock car and want to pimp it asap so they can show it off in the hood or something. I rped as mechanic in various garages for two years even before the revamp which introduced the shift system. The thing is. You can't install new rims on a car in 5 minutes. This is the thing that needs to be changed. You accept the order yes, but then you should spend some time actually doing that car and I mean not just 5 minutes so you can serve next customer. I seen moments when even 5 mechanics on duty couldn't deal with all the customers on site simply because each of them spent least 15-20 mins tending to a car. But then some people may become bored while waiting for the mechanic to roleplay the process and log off or wander away or simply nag them to be faster, be it ic or ooc. So if people spend 15-20 mins on each car for example they won't earn 80k per hour to do so, they would have been on duty for several hours.

 

Another idea that was proposed once in a service garage was that, mechanics didn't have percentages from sales immediately but someone (shift manager) always written down who accepted which order and for how much, mechanics were then paid weekly. But this required more organization and actual effort being put into roleplaying.

Edited January 16, 2020 by Engelbert

[Conway]

As already stated the issue isn't the money earned, it's how the money is earned. As someone who likes to spend time roleplaying on cars I find I often have to cut it short because the person waiting becomes irritated. Instead of punishing the people trying to roleplay properly, punish those who take the job and meme it for the money. Under absolutely no circumstance should you be roleplaying anything if you're not going to do a little bit of research into it and punch out some semi coherant roleplay lines with some logic behind them. 

[Thirteen]

6 hours ago, Conway said:

As already stated the issue isn't the money earned, it's how the money is earned. As someone who likes to spend time roleplaying on cars I find I often have to cut it short because the person waiting becomes irritated. Instead of punishing the people trying to roleplay properly, punish those who take the job and meme it for the money. Under absolutely no circumstance should you be roleplaying anything if you're not going to do a little bit of research into it and punch out some semi coherant roleplay lines with some logic behind them. 

I agree with this statement. As someone that has personally left vehicles at a garage to be worked on for days (and even several weeks on multiple occasions) to help garages showcase their work and roleplay abilities in a more detailed fashion, this hits home for me.

That being said, let's address this suggestion and claim that "mechanics earn too much". Honestly, I think it's more of a result of the overall player mentality on the server where people expect everything to be done as quick as possible. Obviously, a mechanic will earn a decent chunk of money if he can just churn out extensive modifications within short amounts of time. No one is debating that. But that isn't the way it should be, and I look at this more as a problem created by players instead of something that needs to be fixed through the script.

 

My solution to this would simply be for the community to start giving mechanics the time to do work properly. Don't just show up and expect them to modify your entire engine, transmission, brakes and a full body kit within 5 minutes. Instead, let them spend the amount of time they feel is necessary to portray a realistic environment. If necessary, leave your car there for a day while you do other stuff. Vehicle scams are prohibited by the rules for a reason.

And as a final note, all garages has been converted to leases. Which means, they are held at a higher standard and will be followed more closely from now on to make sure that they are up to par with the quality of roleplay expected on our server. So if you feel that someone isn't portraying a garage in a realistic fashion, I encourage everyone to document it and report it, so we can weed out the bad apples.

 

 

[Giles]

2 minutes ago, Thirteen said:

My solution to this would simply be for the community to start giving mechanics the time to do work properly. Don't just show up and expect them to modify your entire engine, transmission, brakes and a full body kit within 5 minutes. Instead, let them spend the amount of time they feel is necessary to portray a realistic environment. If necessary, leave your car there for a day while you do other stuff. Vehicle scams are prohibited by the rules for a reason.

With how much time has passed, establishing garages as more of a car parts drive through of sorts, people have become accustomed to not waiting very long. Unfortunately, I don't think this would get better unless it was sort of forced by the server administration. Obviously, there are a couple garages run by people who like to do it the right way, but the overall sentiment is that "I can go to a garage and be done in less than 20 minutes with a full workup of modifications". I don't see all the garages banding together to force people to wait realistically for a day, hours, etc. I could be wrong, but I doubt that would happen without some intervention. I'm all for more realistic role play, especially for a garage. So if this could be remedied, I'd be in full support of it.

[Thirteen]

Just now, Scaramouche said:

With how much time has passed, establishing garages as more of a car parts drive through of sorts, people have become accustomed to not waiting very long. Unfortunately, I don't think this would get better unless it was sort of forced by the server administration. Obviously, there are a couple garages run by people who like to do it the right way, but the overall sentiment is that "I can go to a garage and be done in less than 20 minutes with a full workup of modifications". I don't see all the garages banding together to force people to wait realistically for a day, hours, etc. I could be wrong, but I doubt that would happen without some intervention. I'm all for more realistic role play, especially for a garage. So if this could be remedied, I'd be in full support of it.

Can it be done? Definitely. But as staff members, we don't have the time to constantly monitor garages either, so we are depending on people documenting and reporting it. With that, we are also able to intervene and set a precedent to make sure that it is done the right way. 
It is a symbiotic relationship where we as staff members can't do it without help from the community, just like the community most likely can't handle it on their own without help from the staff.

 

But what I can reassure you, is that it is something that is being taken seriously from a staff (speaking as Head of Leasing and a member of Property Management, as well one of the people these types of reports should be sent to) point of view, and that reports will be looked into and evaluated.

[Giles]

Just now, Thirteen said:

Can it be done? Definitely. But as staff members, we don't have the time to constantly monitor garages either, so we are depending on people documenting and reporting it. With that, we are also able to intervene and set a precedent to make sure that it is done the right way. 
It is a symbiotic relationship where we as staff members can't do it without help from the community, just like the community most likely can't handle it on their own without help from the staff.

 

But what I can reassure you, is that it is something that is being taken seriously from a staff (speaking as Head of Leasing and a member of Property Management, as well one of the people these types of reports should be sent to) point of view, and that reports will be looked into and evaluated.

I completely understand where you're coming from. If people started reporting the mechanic RP, I'm sure you'd have a lot of reports to deal with. That would also get very taxing. I'm just saying that from personal experience, but I'd be more than happy to send in reports. I do think that an intervention would be the best approach. Although, you have to take into account that this is also a video game people play for fun. I understand the realism aspect, but there needs to be a balance to that. There should be a precedent that dictates these things. I feel it should be common sense that a full workup of vehicle tuning shouldn't take 20 minutes, but of course that's whats become the norm, lol.

[zaXer.]

Supporting, I've had mechanic shifts myself in which I've made almost 100k for about two hours.

We also need to get more mechanic, mechanic garages. Like, actual garages that look like mechanic shops, not some mechanic garages slapped in front of a property with no mechanic mapping whatsoever at all.