Why is there a double standard surrounding VOIP Metagaming?

[Trupiano]

THIS THREAD IS NOT ABOUT THE USE OF VOIP BY LEO FACTIONS, PLEASE REFRAIN FROM DISCUSSING THAT SPECIFICALLY AS TO NOT DERAIL THE THREAD

 

With all the controversy surrounding Resident's ban appeal, I would like to raise a genuine concern about what I view as a double standard when it comes to metagaming over VOIP. 

 

Now, as far as I'm aware. If a faction or group of players are found communication over VOIP while RPing that is considered metagaming. However recently I've begun to noticing a trend where that rule is only being enforced on illegal RPers and NOT Non-LEO legal factions and content creators. Resident was more then once caught in voice with members of his faction and regularly you'd hear people being told not to say certain things while he was streaming. This begs the question, what's being said when the camera isn't rolling? There are small youtubers who's videos are regularly posted on the forums where multiple players are clearly in VOIP and coordinating their activity, telling each other where they are at and what they are doing. While it's not as malicious as say planning a robbery over VOIP, it still clearly gives an unfair advantage to the people who are using it.

 

Additionally I've heard audio recordings of security companies blatantly metagaming over VOIP, talking about how they want to force RP in a certain direction so they can shoot down an illegal RPer. This was reported to staff and it turns out the VOIP channel was hidden from the LFM member in their discord on purpose, which begs the question as to why that faction is even still allowed to exist?

 

So that all being said, how does the community feel about the situation? What is the right course of action to fix this issue?

 

THIS THREAD IS NOT ABOUT THE USE OF VOIP BY LEO FACTIONS, PLEASE REFRAIN FROM DISCUSSING THAT SPECIFICALLY AS TO NOT DERAIL THE THREAD

Edited July 16, 2020 by Henning
disclaimer

[Fergie]

Personally I think it’s a pointless rule in general. If people want to meta game they’ll find a way regardless of the rules. What if this was the mid 2000’s and I was having a group of friends over to play gtaw in the same room? We’d have to all sit quiet and not interact with each other in real life? Voice chat is no different. I shouldn’t be afraid of getting banned when I want to hang out with my friends in voice while rping. People will either follow the MG rules or they won’t. The people that don’t MG shouldn’t be punished. 
 

But if we’re going to have a no voice chat rule, it should be server wide. Not just illegal RP’ers. I know for a fact legal factions, LEO factions, all hang out in voice chat while rping. Let’s not get started on the TAC channels for situations like chases or raids, where LEO factions get to use voice to communicate, giving an unfair advantage over others. (Disclaimer: I’ve been involved with LEO RP since 2011, so it’s not me being a salty illegal rp’er)
 

It should be a single rule that applies to everyone or we should just remove the rule and let people be mature and trust they won’t MG. If they do MG, and they get found out, they should be punished. 

Edited July 16, 2020 by Fergie

[Exploits]

I'm still of the staunch opinion that the best policy is no VOIP of any kind for anybody. All other players are told to restrict everything they do to existing in-game scripts, with only a handful of companies/factions/role-play styles gaining wide exemption, and unless you put an admin or a virulently strict player into every individual Discord/TeamSpeak channel, you'll never achieve an acceptable level of oversight which ensures that their use of VOIP is always in following with the expected rules.

 

We can keep stamping out abuses as they occur, but we'll still be reconciling with the above issue. Metagaming abuses in-game are very easy to catch when the script is logging all text-based interactions: there is no such record-keeping system for VOIP, lest we require all who utilize it to record all their VOIP interactions and turn it over, which is very data-intensive for users; even if we did, who's going to go over the literal hundreds of hours of VOIP being created daily? We can lean on reports and go back to recordings when these reports are made, but I'll touch on that in a moment.

 

57 minutes ago, Henning said:

While it's not as malicious as say planning a robbery over VOIP, it still clearly gives an unfair advantage to the people who are using it.

 

This is the most common level of metagaming I witness in PD. It occurs on the daily within the literal 100+ channels that officers occupy while on-duty with other players. I'm not going to claim to be an angel and to have never done it either -- it's really, really easy to talk and say something you shouldn't have compared to when you're typing. Officers asking others "What's going on?", or "What did your suspect tell you?", or "Did you find a gun on him?" are common questions that come out which really never should. As you said, it isn't malicious, but it still shouldn't happen. Interactions are meant to be in-game, and exporting any of these interactions outside of the server's text medium immediately reduces role-play. Even if these questions are being posed OoCly, doing it on TeamSpeak incidentally squelches players in-game who are not in your TeamSpeak channel from agreeing or disagreeing with the information being presented and does not allow them to participate in the role-play you are currently active in.

 

This exporting is also why relying on player reports for VOIP-based metagaming is nearly impossible. If you aren't in the VOIP channel yourself, how do you know it's metagaming? There's no way for you to be absolutely certain that what you just experienced wasn't actually conducted based on information passed on ICly through the radio, or face-to-face conversation, or a text message, or a phone call. Ostensibly, there's little difference between me calling my Sergeant in-game and asking "What am I charging this suspect with?" and going on TeamSpeak and asking them the same question directly ... except one is based explicitly on a role-play interaction, which is what the server purports to promote first and foremost. Putting the onus on the affected player to put up a report is a hard hill to climb, and unless the people involved in the alleged metagaming were recording all their VOIP interactions and turn those recordings over if they even were, then there's no evidence to look at and we all shrug our shoulders and move on.

 

The vast majority of the successful reports I've seen regarding VOIP metagaming have been videos which were voluntarily posted by the perpetrators without them knowing/caring that the audio they recorded showed them metagaming. We can't rely on people voluntarily or accidentally turning themselves in for rule-breaking -- I hope that's an obvious statement.

 

Also, it's just plain fucking distracting. Even if I keep my lips sealed tight, I'll be fed information through my TeamSpeak channel that my character shouldn't be privy to, sometimes during an active scene. It's now on me to avoid using that information so as to not metagame. If I misuse the information, I'll be the one punished for metagaming, even though it was fed to me by somebody who should have kept their mouth shut. The only reason people don't see how frustrating it is to walk around this level of casual metagaming when role-playing is because most either don't see it as metagaming, don't care, or have become too comfortable with it as-is due to the lack of any consistent punishment for this kind of ... minimalist rule-breaking, I guess we'll call it?

 

I don't care for any of it. The level of role-play from players doesn't, in pure theory, have to be negatively impacted by usage of VOIP, but I have never, ever not seen it impacted by the usage of VOIP. And I am constantly stuck, sat wondering: is this really a worthwhile trade off to catch dudes in fast cars easier? My vote's a strong no.

 

I'd hesitate to call this a double standard. I think the issue is more in the way that VOIP metgaming occurs. It is, on its face, more difficult to uncover and punish exactly because it is VOIP metagaming.

Edited July 16, 2020 by Exploits

[Daquan Kingston]

On a personal level, I think it is unfair that LSPD can use voice-chat and RPly be talking onto the radio, while the rest of the players cannot do the same.
Traditionally throughout GTA RP, LSPD has had this benefit over the rest of the players, but it is quite contradicting when you think about it.
Why would a LSPD officer be able to report clearly on voice while steering his car, but the other person who in this case is evading, is forced to text their friends instead of using the same radio item per say, and talk to them on voice so it will not affect the in-game situation to an advantage or disadvantage?

[18Cowboys]

if lspd can use vc during pursuits let criminals

[Marksman]

1 minute ago, 18Cowboys said:

if lspd can use vc during pursuits let criminals

no

[Tsarna]

Zero tolerance about VOIP. Should be considered Metagaming for everyone. Period. Gives andvantages to people who do it - simple.

[Illusory]

I can't speak for everyone nor do I have the end-all solution but with the type of RP I'm involved with it's hard to say it's not needed. Being a pilot in the SD and having to follow vehicles evading on the ground can be remarkably difficult due to the limitations of sync draw distance, etc. Having to type while flying with both hands just simply isn't something I can do with any effectiveness at all. (Only during pursuits obviously, I'm happy to stop flying and type at any other point, which we're already required to do). 

 

It's currently against our department policy to use voice chat for anything outside of pursuits and even then using our in-game text based radio TAC channel is preferred if it's possible to do at the time. It's just one of those things that's been up for debate since I started RPing back in 2009.

Edited July 16, 2020 by Sush

[Bruce002]

Seems like this Resident guy is immune to proper punishments, unlike us. Let me go start twitch streaming and maybe I can be also immune to proper punishments.

Edited July 16, 2020 by Bruce002

[CloutToken]

For those who are mentioning LEO TS usage on this thread:

The voice channels you often see LEOs conversating among one another in videos are our "duty channels" which are OOC. Anything that is relayed over these channels shall not have an effect on what your character is actively doing in the server.

I can speak for the LSSD when I say that voice comms are something that are strictly enforced. TAC channels are only used in two situations: vehicle pursuits and shootuts (even then, it's not uncommon to see this called out over /r after a suspect is taken down). It would be very hard and tedious to give updates for in a text channel. When we lose a suspect, take them down, whatever, the channel is cleared within seconds and is taken into an in-game TAC channel that you need to use /r for. We have two of these channels. 

Edited July 16, 2020 by CloutToken