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Server Rules: Questions and Answers


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On 4/8/2021 at 2:11 PM, friendlyman said:

How can you be sure of this though?

 

Even if you say it's never personal, it's impossible to know that if there are zero public guidelines as to how to punish people for certain rule breaks. It's as much possible that an admin is being personal as well as an admin is just doing their job as far as the player is concerned

We don't have a set "guideline" per say on what and who gets a punishment for the x amount of time, nor a document that says "John Doe deserves 90 minute ajails everytime we encounter them." We base a lot of this off administrative record, attitude, willing to learn, and being receptive to incidents.

If an admin comes, tries to explain how you blatantly PG'ed - and you're just like "nope your a stupid idiot" - you best bet you're probably going to get an ajail over a warning. On the other side of things, if we come to you, you're receptive, willing to learn, wanting to learn - we are very open to making sure that it's only a simple "educational" time with an administrator rather then going to a punishment instantly. You come into the server and troll for the first three hours you're on it? You're probably going to get banned over anything else first.

If you want what we call our "punishment" scale, and what I have been making more known to the admin team? It's here;

Education/Information - educate the player on what they did wrong and how they can fix it.
Basic Punishment (Ajail, kick, warning) - Does the player have a record? Spoken to before? Were they receptive and wanting to learn or did they just not care? Do they have 1000 hours on the server and breaking some of the most known rules? 
Ban at last resort - Player is unwilling to learn, constant admin record and run-in's.

If we make a strict punishment scale, we have no discretion on situations. Imagine you're a brand new player, you accidently type "lol" in IC chat, but it was meant for OOC chat - now an admin comes and has to ajail you for 65 minutes. It's not a good look nor something we want to have to happen to anyone. I'm not saying it has to be this extreme, but it's just an example. A lot of this stems down to each individual situation and incident that has happened where an admin comes into play. MG by typing "lol" in IC chat, is not even as close as to if you are sitting in a discord call and telling you're friend where to find you. By using our discretion, and dealing with different incidents, it allows more leeway at times when something is a "gray lined" area, maybe a rule that hasn't been fully "updated" yet per say. We hear a lot of the whole "well they got a warning and I got an ajail" - Well, do you have a record? Maybe they didn't - were you receptive and willing to learn like they were? Or did you sit here and argue with an admin for 25 minutes about how doing "/me flies away like superman" is realistic? (Obviously an example, what i'm trying to make a point of is blatant disregards for the rules that are so absurd, that everyone and anyone knows you did wrong - like if you were to spawn into the server and go run over 50 people for no reason, and you are sitting here trying to argue how its allowed and the admin doesn't know the rules.)

On the overall topic of accountability and assuring our admins are not basing punishments off a personal bias? Hi, you've met Pillsbury. You have described a portion of the task I have here in GTA World, being the Head of Admins. I'm pretty honest in reports when they come in. People might not like my decision, but my job is to look for facts, be a fact finder, be objective and look at everything from a third party review. I have reversed admin's decisions before, I have kept admin's choices before, it's all circumstantial. Anyone that has worked with me or asked for Staff Management's view on something, usually get back a six paragraph memo on why we are concluding one way or another. We don't leave players in the blank of just being like "yeah you're beat". If you want my honest answer? No, we don't sit here and request discord logs from admins when they conclude generalized in-game reports or forum reports, unless its related to a Staff Management issue and we believe there is a reason that you're own discord logs from people would be needed, nor do I personally go and look through chat logs of our 50+ admins to make sure they are all being pleasant to the players and handling the reports to the top of the top par everyday, as that's pretty much a violation of privacy aswell, because searching for an admin name, will also give you all of their RP to. But, there is never going to be a way we can sit here and track everyone and everything they say, do, conclude with. That's why we have the process setup, for the players to bring forth problems that they see, that we might not see on an everyday basis. Maybe if we had 10 admins, but we are a growing team, and are continuing to grow every month. Don't take this as laziness from Staff Management, but our general rules and guidelines we have. 

We train our admins as best as we can to show them to be non-bias, be objective and understanding of all the situations/parties involved, but it's almost like the saying in customer service- "You can train someone to work customer service, but you can't train someone to be genuinely nice". It sucks to say, and I hate to say it - but we genuinely do our best to be accountable for all of our admins, and make sure they are accountable for themselves aswell. But with being an online game, not an actual workplace, it's limited respectfully so. If someone is going to hold a bias, they are going to, we cannot physically and forcefully make people not to. We obviously have guidelines for it, if your bias, show leeway one way or another and not be fair to all the parties involved? We will hold our admins accountable. Generally speaking however, the administrative team we have now, is extremely accountable for themselves - a lot of these admins? They report themselves to me, when they know they messed up. They have integrity, as much as some people want to make it out that our admins don't, they truly do-- and they truly care.. a lot for this community.. Not a lot of people have the guts to go in a server of 500+, take hundreds of reports a month, make this part of their own lifestyle and "job" in the sense - yet, are not paid one cent, and do it honestly out of the kindness of their hearts. They do it so the players can have a more enjoyable experience. Not a lot of people have the full guts to be a face of a community, a report handler, and to be ready to be scolded with almost every step they take.

Accountability is important in any job or task anyone does, in the real world or in this game, however there is a fine line in what we can cross into, before it starts becoming invasion of someone's space. We can writeup as many guides as we want, but if someone doesn't wanna be accountable? They aren't going to be.

 

Nothing here is an official list, let me note that as I did above in a previous post. But as an admin and now being in Staff Management, is generally the view I have on this topic when being brought forth. I'm not going to be dishonest or lie about it, but there is a lot of struggles and technical things in the middle, where sometimes leaving discretion is better rather then having a strict scale saying this deserves X amount of time. Every incident and situation are different and have different circumstances and conclusions for a reason.

Edited by Pillsbury
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9 hours ago, Pillsbury said:

  

We don't have a set "guideline" per say on what and who gets a punishment for the x amount of time, nor a document that says "John Doe deserves 90 minute ajails everytime we encounter them." We base a lot of this off administrative record, attitude, willing to learn, and being receptive to incidents.

If an admin comes, tries to explain how you blatantly PG'ed - and you're just like "nope your a stupid idiot" - you best bet you're probably going to get an ajail over a warning. On the other side of things, if we come to you, you're receptive, willing to learn, wanting to learn - we are very open to making sure that it's only a simple "educational" time with an administrator rather then going to a punishment instantly. You come into the server and troll for the first three hours you're on it? You're probably going to get banned over anything else first.

If you want what we call our "punishment" scale, and what I have been making more known to the admin team? It's here;

Education/Information - educate the player on what they did wrong and how they can fix it.
Basic Punishment (Ajail, kick, warning) - Does the player have a record? Spoken to before? Were they receptive and wanting to learn or did they just not care? Do they have 1000 hours on the server and breaking some of the most known rules? 
Ban at last resort - Player is unwilling to learn, constant admin record and run-in's.

If we make a strict punishment scale, we have no discretion on situations. Imagine you're a brand new player, you accidently type "lol" in IC chat, but it was meant for OOC chat - now an admin comes and has to ajail you for 65 minutes. It's not a good look nor something we want to have to happen to anyone. I'm not saying it has to be this extreme, but it's just an example. A lot of this stems down to each individual situation and incident that has happened where an admin comes into play. MG by typing "lol" in IC chat, is not even as close as to if you are sitting in a discord call and telling you're friend where to find you. By using our discretion, and dealing with different incidents, it allows more leeway at times when something is a "gray lined" area, maybe a rule that hasn't been fully "updated" yet per say. We hear a lot of the whole "well they got a warning and I got an ajail" - Well, do you have a record? Maybe they didn't - were you receptive and willing to learn like they were? Or did you sit here and argue with an admin for 25 minutes about how doing "/me flies away like superman" is realistic? (Obviously an example, what i'm trying to make a point of is blatant disregards for the rules that are so absurd, that everyone and anyone knows you did wrong - like if you were to spawn into the server and go run over 50 people for no reason, and you are sitting here trying to argue how its allowed and the admin doesn't know the rules.)

On the overall topic of accountability and assuring our admins are not basing punishments off a personal bias? Hi, you've met Pillsbury. You have described a portion of the task I have here in GTA World, being the Head of Admins. I'm pretty honest in reports when they come in. People might not like my decision, but my job is to look for facts, be a fact finder, be objective and look at everything from a third party review. I have reversed admin's decisions before, I have kept admin's choices before, it's all circumstantial. Anyone that has worked with me or asked for Staff Management's view on something, usually get back a six paragraph memo on why we are concluding one way or another. We don't leave players in the blank of just being like "yeah you're beat". If you want my honest answer? No, we don't sit here and request discord logs from admins when they conclude generalized in-game reports or forum reports, unless its related to a Staff Management issue and we believe there is a reason that you're own discord logs from people would be needed, nor do I personally go and look through chat logs of our 50+ admins to make sure they are all being pleasant to the players and handling the reports to the top of the top par everyday, as that's pretty much a violation of privacy aswell, because searching for an admin name, will also give you all of their RP to. But, there is never going to be a way we can sit here and track everyone and everything they say, do, conclude with. That's why we have the process setup, for the players to bring forth problems that they see, that we might not see on an everyday basis. Maybe if we had 10 admins, but we are a growing team, and are continuing to grow every month. Don't take this as laziness from Staff Management, but our general rules and guidelines we have. 

We train our admins as best as we can to show them to be non-bias, be objective and understanding of all the situations/parties involved, but it's almost like the saying in customer service- "You can train someone to work customer service, but you can't train someone to be genuinely nice". It sucks to say, and I hate to say it - but we genuinely do our best to be accountable for all of our admins, and make sure they are accountable for themselves aswell. But with being an online game, not an actual workplace, it's limited respectfully so. If someone is going to hold a bias, they are going to, we cannot physically and forcefully make people not to. We obviously have guidelines for it, if your bias, show leeway one way or another and not be fair to all the parties involved? We will hold our admins accountable. Generally speaking however, the administrative team we have now, is extremely accountable for themselves - a lot of these admins? They report themselves to me, when they know they messed up. They have integrity, as much as some people want to make it out that our admins don't, they truly do-- and they truly care.. a lot for this community.. Not a lot of people have the guts to go in a server of 500+, take hundreds of reports a month, make this part of their own lifestyle and "job" in the sense - yet, are not paid one cent, and do it honestly out of the kindness of their hearts. They do it so the players can have a more enjoyable experience. Not a lot of people have the full guts to be a face of a community, a report handler, and to be ready to be scolded with almost every step they take.

Accountability is important in any job or task anyone does, in the real world or in this game, however there is a fine line in what we can cross into, before it starts becoming invasion of someone's space. We can writeup as many guides as we want, but if someone doesn't wanna be accountable? They aren't going to be.

 

Nothing here is an official list, let me note that as I did above in a previous post. But as an admin and now being in Staff Management, is generally the view I have on this topic when being brought forth. I'm not going to be dishonest or lie about it, but there is a lot of struggles and technical things in the middle, where sometimes leaving discretion is better rather then having a strict scale saying this deserves X amount of time. Every incident and situation are different and have different circumstances and conclusions for a reason.

I honestly feel as if this should be stickied in the Information section. Thank you very much for taking the time out of your day to type this out, a lot of players could definitely benefit from reading this as it's a bit of a gray area when it comes to admin punishments. Much appreciated, definitely a lot of key things to take from this. 

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1 minute ago, maverickuk said:

Hi this might be simple but I lost everything in my Inventory my keyboard died when I was swimming and drowned when I came back everything was gone is this normal? is there away to retrieve it?

If you have proof of this post a refund request.

 

When your character dies you drop everything in your inventory except your phone, on the spot you die at. If you die via rp you can't obviously get any of the items back as it'd be breaking rules. But for this case, make a refund request (I'd say) and with proof you'll hopefully get the items refunded.

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3 minutes ago, Yoak said:

If you have proof of this post a refund request.

 

When your character dies you drop everything in your inventory except your phone, on the spot you die at. If you die via rp you can't obviously get any of the items back as it'd be breaking rules. But for this case, make a refund request (I'd say) and with proof you'll hopefully get the items refunded.

Thank you for your reply. Yea I thought it would be because of the death, If it was RP then I would expect it all gone. Stupid keyboard, unfortunately I don't think I have any screen shots of my inventory so I guess its just gone. Thank you for your help though

Edited by maverickuk
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I've got a question about living in an RV / Camper, in my case the Brute Camper. A lot of people like to live comfortably this way and it's not necessarily people who just have a low - middle income class status. Some just prefer that way of living. How does one register a business if they are living without a script address? Kind of limits people who don't want to live in an apartment, house or rent a cheap motel room just to have an address. Sure I could just rent a cheap motel scriptly for the address, but that kind of goes against my character and really doesn't make sense outside of an OOC standpoint that Property Management requires a physical address.

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On 4/28/2021 at 1:17 PM, maverickuk said:

Thank you for your reply. Yea I thought it would be because of the death, If it was RP then I would expect it all gone. Stupid keyboard, unfortunately I don't think I have any screen shots of my inventory so I guess its just gone. Thank you for your help though

Just letting you know for the future that admins will have logs of all of this stuff. Even if you don't know exactly what you dropped they can check the logs.

 

That said if it is easily replaceable stuff don't even bother. But if you drop like guns and ammo or expensive rare items then definitely make a request.

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12 hours ago, icarusfeather said:

Just letting you know for the future that admins will have logs of all of this stuff. Even if you don't know exactly what you dropped they can check the logs.

 

That said if it is easily replaceable stuff don't even bother. But if you drop like guns and ammo or expensive rare items then definitely make a request.

Thank you, Yea it was a gun and a few bit I am not so bothered my but I guess to late to request now so will just have to save up again to replace it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

@Notbond@Pillsbury@Björk@Groz

 

Question on the legitimacy of this statement:

"We do not roleplay that certain areas of the city are busier than they are in-character."

 

Is this the official stance of the server? Are we really allowing robberies on a realistically busy pier in broad daylight now? I would please like an official clarification on the matter. From Adv's response, you're telling us when there are 800 people in-game, that's the population of the city and should be portrayed as such? This opens up a treasure trove of portrayal issues. This basically says that I can rob someone in the middle of Legion Square, no matter what time of day, and get away with it because IC'ly no one is around to stop it at that point in time. According to that post, nothing would be taken into consideration as to what it would be like realistically in the middle of Legion Square because "it's all IC". Serious?

 

Might as well make it a cops and robbers server at that point because that's where it's going to go. It's going to throw portrayal out the window and give people a reason to blindly commit crime where it makes no sense because, "the population is IC and crime doesn't sleep". That would be ridiculous. Crime doesn't sleep, but neither does a city with multi-millions of people and a police force that operates 24/7, which we don't have here. It makes no sense to RP the city only as the IC server population. Everyone who is now reported with an unrealistic robbery will now have that to back them up. Cops and robbers, here we come.

 

EDIT: See below for past examples.

 

Edited by Sixty
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2 hours ago, Sixty said:

 

Question on the legitimacy of this statement:

"We do not roleplay that certain areas of the city are busier than they are in-character."

 

Is this the official stance of the server? I would challenge this and would like an official clarification. You're basically telling me when there are 800 people in-game, that's the population of the city and should be portrayed as such? This opens up a treasure trove of portrayal issues. This basically says that I can rob someone in the middle of Legion Square, no matter what time of day, and get away with it because IC'ly no one is around to stop it at that point in time? According to that post, nothing would be taken into consideration as to what it would be like realistically in the middle of Legion Square because its all IC. Serious?

 

Might as well make it a cops and robbers server at that point because that's where it's going to go. It's going to throw portrayal out the window and give people a reason to blindly commit crime where it makes no sense because, "the population is IC and crime doesn't sleep". That would be ridiculous. Crime doesn't sleep, but neither does a city with multi-millions of people, which we don't have here. It makes no sense to RP the city only as the IC server population. Everyone who is now reported with an unrealistic robbery will now have that to back them up. Cops and robbers, here we come.

I have been closely involved in this particular scenario (IC and OOC) and with all due respect to the handling administrator, I was appalled to read the concluding statement. Not only this would lead to ample opportunities for anyone to do whatever they wish to based off of server timings (eg: robbing/killing someone at Pier/Legion Square because only 100 people are online), but also the fact that there have been several cases where reports have previously been concluded considering whether something like that would happen in its real-life equivalent. Examples:

Concluded by Pillsbury: 


Concluded by Soup: 

 

 

Edited by The.Godfather
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47 minutes ago, The.Godfather said:

I have been closely involved in this particular scenario (IC and OOC) and with all due respect to the handling administrator, I was appalled to read the concluding statement. Not only this would lead to ample opportunities for anyone to do whatever they wish to based off of server timings (eg: robbing/killing someone at Pier/Legion Square because only 100 people are online), but also the fact that there have been several cases where reports have previously been concluded considering whether something like that would happen in its real-life equivalent.

I wasn't even involved, but I do browse reports from time to time and I was just shocked at that response. I guess it's time to start a robbery crew because "crime doesn't have a time or a place" and "limiting crimes because of reasons such as 'in broad daylight' or in public places only causes detriment to the roleplay". It wasn't even a one-off for the report, that was a blanket statement on the position of the server admins. This is a dangerous road to head down. We no longer live in a "city", we live in a bubble of 800 people that's now IC only. Guess if I murder someone in Legion Square at 9 in the morning when there's only 100 people online and no one sees it, I get away with it lol. I can't wait for people to use that response as an appeal to unrealistic crime now, since population all IC.

Edited by Sixty
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