Why is there a double standard surrounding VOIP Metagaming?

[marbella mondays]

VOIP should be banned serverwide for all people. illegal and legal rpers (including LEOs). VOIP, although metagaming per say might not always happen... 95% of people if not more, use VOIP for their advantage and it's really irritating to most of the people who don't. I'd either allow VOIP to be used for criminals evading/doing stuff in a TeamSpeak channels if LEOs can, or ban it serverwide. There's no middleground, no buts, no whys or ifs... it's pretty obvious who has the upper hand unfair advantage at the moment. It might be a traditional roleplay thing, but it's the same reason a lot of things that happen shouldn't happen. If I'm being forced to use text chat in a certain situation, then others should be too.

 

EDIT: Just seen the LEO and content creator thing, but it still needed to be said. Since the double-standard to VOIP applies to everyone.

Edited July 16, 2020 by bidi bidi bom bom

[Tsarna]

20 minutes ago, Gambler said:

If that is the rule, bann me right now. I hang with friends all the time on discord. I don't want to lose social connection in order to gain a fake social connection. 

Nobody does not care, if ya voice chat with your real life friends about dogs and ice cream. People are talking VOIP about IG stuff, which gives advantage to the RP-er, who uses it.

[eTaylor]

You get banned if you have your own discord and talk to friends while you roleplay, meanwhile you have cops that sit together in the same car and don't speak a single IC word to each other IG and that's considered perfectly acceptable because they need it for pursuits.

[Daquan Kingston]

1 hour ago, CloutToken said:

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. 

Exactly for the same reason, the other party SHOULD be allowed to use voice communication while escaping from you. The fact is that you guys can use voice while as you say "it woudl be very hard and tedious to give updates via text", so it would be for the person evading to give updates to their friends who might be on a phone-call in character or on a radio frequency. This right here is a double standard.

[Tsarna]

Just now, Daquan Kingston said:

Exactly for the same reason, the other party SHOULD be allowed to use voice communication while escaping from you. The fact is that you guys can use voice while as you say "it woudl be very hard and tedious to give updates via text", so it would be for the person evading to give updates to their friends who might be on a phone-call in character or on a radio frequency. This right here is a double standard.

Yep, agree completely. I am not in any part playing in illegal faction or illegal character, BUT I see the point, and this, to be honest, sucks. It should be no advantages to both sides, but pure SAME LEVEL!

[Exploits]

2 hours ago, Sush said:

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

There's also a server rule against metagaming, but here we are. That this is the most-touted response by LEO role-players when these threads come up always has me rolling my eyes. If it held weight then you could have closed down the entire pedophilia controversy of late by just saying "Well, that's against the rules". It's not an argument. That the rules exist are meaningless. The question becomes one of enforcement to make the rule itself meaningful, and there's already plenty said in that respect.

 

The factions do a great job of not misusing TAC channels, especially compared to servers I've been on in the past. But this does nothing to assuage the issues brought up by the O.P., and does nothing to combat the discussions by faction members which go on endlessly within all the channels that are not the TAC channels. I am not claiming that all these discussions are somehow, by default, metagaming. The claim, and the issue, is that you can't police all of these individual discussions to ensure metagaming isn't happening, and when it does happen, it's still nigh impossible to punish. Again: the metagaming examples outlined by the O.P., egregious or otherwise, essentially require that those being reported volunteer the evidence that would see them punished for their rule-breaking. This makes the enforcement impossible. It damn near renders the rule itself moot. And whether we want to talk about PD/SD and TAC channels or not-TAC channels, it's the same issue. You're going to have numerous individual channels which should only have private conversations going on, but can and easily do perpetuate metagaming on an almost casual level, no matter if these are civilian role-players, gang members, security companies, whatever, that simply cannot be overseen at all times.

 

It's a meme at this point. This thread wants to find answers towards avoiding VOIP misuse, but we have to tiptoe the discussion so as to avoid talking about the only factions in the server which receive a server-hosted and approved TeamSpeak with which to use. Who do you think this discussion would most affect? Even if we came up with solutions while never talking about LEO role-players, whatever those solutions may be would still have to pass through these factions first because it would most affect the way we currently operate more than anyone else. Or are we ready to admit that, actually yes, we do hold LEO role-players to a different standard regarding these rules so as to maintain the advantage TeamSpeak gives us? It's ignoring the elephant in the room.

 

So we're in a position where we can't even ensure nor properly enforce metagaming rules on the one server-approved private VOIP channel, let alone any others, while telling everybody else that VOIP can't be used because of potential metagaming. Why the dichotomy? Why are we given the honour system, boy scout pledge when everyone else is told to get stuffed? If we're looking to talk about actual double standards, then there it is. The only arguments for it always boil down to pursuits and shootouts, and I really couldn't give less of a shit about it since nobody else cries about dying in a shootout or crashing their car because they didn't have the benefit of VOIPing with their buddies and there would still be role-play produced by these scenes without the existence of VOIP. It always reduces itself to maintaining an advantage that, for whatever reason, the server allows to us any nobody else, and always held up on rickety arguments that, if made by any other groups, would quickly be shot down or simply refused outright by pointing back to Rule #3.

Edited July 16, 2020 by Exploits

[Tsarna]

Just now, Exploits said:

There's also a server rule against metagaming, but here we are. That this is the most-touted response by LEO role-players when these threads come up always has me rolling my eyes. If it held weight then you could have closed down the entire pedophilia controversy of late by just saying "Well, that's against the rules". It's not an argument. That the rules exist are meaningless. The question becomes one of enforcement to make the rule itself meaningful, and there's already plenty said in that respect.

 

The factions do a great job of not misusing TAC channels, especially compared to servers I've been on in the past. But this does nothing to assuage the issues brought up by the O.P., and does nothing to combat the discussions by faction members which go on endlessly within all the channels that are not the TAC channels. I am not claiming that all these discussions are somehow, by default, metagaming. The claim, and the issue, is that you can't police all of these individual discussions to ensure metagaming isn't happening, and when it does happen, it's still nigh impossible to punish. Again: the metagaming examples outlined by the O.P., egregious or otherwise, essentially require that those being reported volunteer the evidence that would see them punished for their rule-breaking. This makes the enforcement impossible. It damn near renders the rule itself moot. And whether we want to talk about PD/SD and TAC channels or not-TAC channels, it's the same issue. You're going to have numerous individual channels which should only have private conversations going on, but can and easily do perpetuate metagaming on an almost casual level, no matter if these are civilian role-players, gang members, security companies, whatever, that simply cannot be overseen at all times.

 

It's a meme at this point. This thread wants to find answers towards avoiding VOIP misuse, but we have to tiptoe the discussion so as to avoid talking about the only factions in the server which receive a server-hosted and approved TeamSpeak with which to use. Who do you think this discussion would most affect? Even if we came up with solutions while never talking about LEO role-players, whatever those solutions may be would still have to pass through these factions first because it would most affect the way we currently operate more than anyone else. Or are we ready to admit that, actually yes, we do hold LEO role-players to a different standard regarding these rules so as to maintain the advantage TeamSpeak gives us? It's ignoring the elephant in the room.

 

So we're in a position where we can't even ensure nor properly enforce metagaming rules on the one server-approved private VOIP channel, let alone any others, while telling everybody else that VOIP can't be used because of potential metagaming. Why the dichotomy? Why are we given the honour system, boy scout pledge when everyone else is told to get stuffed? If we're looking to talk about actual double standards, then there it is. The only arguments for it always boil down to pursuits and shootouts, and I really couldn't give less of a shit about it since nobody else cries about dying in a shootout or crashing their car because they didn't have the benefit of VOIPing with their buddies and there would still be role-play produced by these scenes without the existence of VOIP.

+1

[eTaylor]

Just now, Exploits said:

There's also a server rule against metagaming, but here we are. That this is the most-touted response by LEO role-players when these threads come up always has me rolling my eyes. If it held weight then you could have closed down the entire pedophilia controversy of late by just saying "Well, that's against the rules". It's not an argument. That the rules exist are meaningless. The question becomes one of enforcement to make the rule itself meaningful, and there's already plenty said in that respect.

 

The factions do a great job of not misusing TAC channels, especially compared to servers I've been on in the past. But this does nothing to assuage the issues brought up by the O.P., and does nothing to combat the discussions by faction members which go on endlessly within all the channels that are not the TAC channels. I am not claiming that all these discussions are somehow, by default, metagaming. The claim, and the issue, is that you can't police all of these individual discussions to ensure metagaming isn't happening, and when it does happen, it's still nigh impossible to punish. Again: the metagaming examples outlined by the O.P., egregious or otherwise, essentially require that those being reported volunteer the evidence that would see them punished for their rule-breaking. This makes the enforcement impossible. It damn near renders the rule itself moot. And whether we want to talk about PD/SD and TAC channels or not-TAC channels, it's the same issue. You're going to have numerous individual channels which should only have private conversations going on, but can and easily do perpetuate metagaming on an almost casual level, no matter if these are civilian role-players, gang members, security companies, whatever, that simply cannot be overseen at all times.

 

It's a meme at this point. This thread wants to find answers towards avoiding VOIP misuse, but we have to tiptoe the discussion so as to avoid talking about the only factions in the server which receive a server-hosted and approved TeamSpeak with which to use. Who do you think this discussion would most affect? Even if we came up with solutions while never talking about LEO role-players, whatever those solutions may be would still have to pass through these factions first because it would most affect the way we currently operate more than anyone else. Or are we ready to admit that, actually yes, we do hold LEO role-players to a different standard regarding these rules so as to maintain the advantage TeamSpeak gives us? It's ignoring the elephant in the room.

 

So we're in a position where we can't even ensure nor properly enforce metagaming rules on the one server-approved private VOIP channel, let alone any others, while telling everybody else that VOIP can't be used because of potential metagaming. Why the dichotomy? Why are we given the honour system, boy scout pledge when everyone else is told to get stuffed? If we're looking to talk about actual double standards, then there it is. The only arguments for it always boil down to pursuits and shootouts, and I really couldn't give less of a shit about it since nobody else cries about dying in a shootout or crashing their car because they didn't have the benefit of VOIPing with their buddies and there would still be role-play produced by these scenes without the existence of VOIP.

https://streamable.com/tf1ib

 

[Illusory]

This thread isn't even about LEO VOIP usage but here we are again. I even said in my original post that people have been quoting that I don't have a solution and this isn't the place to lambaste people without any evidence. If you want to provide suggestions to PD or SD there are threads about that for that purpose.

[MickeyO]

Just now, eTaylor said:

https://streamable.com/tf1ib

 

LMAO, totally no double standard.

Edited July 16, 2020 by MickeyO