Trucking Roleplay

[orca112]

I believe there is a big elephant in the room and yet after some voices in 2019 seemingly not spoken about ever again.

The elephant I am talking about is Trucking Roleplay (or shall I say Trucking 'Roleplay'?) on this server, the trucking script and how to tackle present issues as trucker, trucking company as well as third party such as Law Enforcement, Criminals down to the ordinary citizen. But why is it an elephant in the room? Well, glad you asked.

 

Trucking roleplay appeared to have always been sort of a delicate topic. The trucking script itself is not too bad, but reminds of an RPG script and combined with mostly new players and those that are on the "get rich quick" train, it creates a toxic environment to be in as one who wishes to roleplay a delivery driver or trucker. Instead of being rewarded for your roleplay and putting details into what you are doing as well as interacting with your environment (actual business workers, other truckers, customers, etc...), you are being pushed by other truckers to "speed up", " not idle on this spot" or "I thought you've been afk" because you have been taking too long and others are too impatient to wait two minutes for you to wrap up your delivery. This often leads to unrealistic driving, parking and your truck blocked in, even.

Spoiler

I personally like the freedom around the script which technically allows for individual roleplay around deliveries, however, that is nowhere being rewarded opposed to other jobs such as a business /startshift which forces you to actively roleplay in order to get paid - the polar opposite. By being rewarded for putting as little detail into your roleplay down to no roleplay at all and quicker deliveries, thus quicker cash, it creates this toxic environment and makes trucking roleplay a rather unpleasant experience, especially for new players.

I have been roleplaying around trucking with two characters - one being a trucker with IMEX Logistics, the other one working within private security which customers are basically all operational trucking companies. Through both eyes, I have seen good and bad around the trucking community and characters. I have seen people putting love and detail into what they are doing, but also people rolling up the trucking company yard in an expensive sports car just to zoom off in a truck to hustle and other way around - not even bothering to change their clothes. And latest sadly made up the majority of the trucking community across all companies, freelance delivery drivers and rental truck delivery drivers. Whilst it may be less at one company, it is a consistant issue across the whole board.

Spoiler

And yes, I pulled through the grind and ultimately was able to drive a Pounder to do deliveries with. But at what price? I lost my sanity and I feel brain cells dying every evening I log onto my trucking character and decide to follow a busy route because there are no other possibilities. Seeing trucks cutting lines, zooming through the opposit direction of traffic, overtaking each other, competing over deliveries and disregarding their entire environment for the sake of being the first and making as much money as possible - and thus pulling the reputation of all and every trucker down. Who does not know the infamous zooming Speedos nowadays? The ones that are a danger to Los Santos traffic and each and everyone out on these roads. The truckers. It drags down the reputation of all truckers as a whole, not only the individual with awful driving.

I prefer the alternate routes. The less profitable routes. The longer routes - the lonely routes. Solely to keep my sanity because I do not have to deal with other truckers - which ultimately pulls a uno reverse card on the idea of a roleplay server thriving from interactions between players. Not a solo ETS2 experience.

 

That is where trucking companies come in place. A social hub, a place to get in touch with colleagues and interact with each other. Recognizing the uniform, the same vehicle color along the way and stopping, having a quick chit chat inbetween deliveries or make nasty remarks on bad delivery drivers. Of course this opinion is biased, but I personally believe that with IMEX Logistics, I found a fairly decent company to roll along with my character. Seeing lots of interactions between employees, actual characters along the way and a solid structure that keeps the company running. Though I cannot speak for other trucking companies, but it always seemed they are not as focused on the roleplay aspect, leaving little room for interactions between deliveries.

These companies are a safe haven - if roleplayed with the proper intent and dedication from its members. If the company solely exists to reel in cash for the owner and manager, then there will not be any quality roleplay coming out of nowhere, but pushing even more to the already toxic environment as of "You got to make cash for us.", the more and quicker, the better. Allowing for properly roleplayed procedures in the hiring process as well as introduction and guidance in the beginning of a characters career within a trucking company lays the foundation for decent trucking roleplay - explaining, presenting examples and encouraging to interact with your surroundings and take your time into deliveries rather than just grinding through the system regardless of your surroundings. Additionally, active supervision and means of contact if issues arise are vital to maintain the quality amongst your drivers. Whilst my character hold the position of a simple driver, my character likes to call out people for their misbehaviour - sometimes subtle, sometimes blatantly open for everyone to hear whilst also acting as a point of contact as experienced driver within the company to help in queries and provide guidance. And of course there is plenty of stuff to be done off work - night outs, socialising with colleagues and many more possibilities to spend your characters free time - with colleagues from the company or without.

 

Regardless, I can probably pull a bunch of videos from my unlisted youtube showing subpar roleplay or no roleplay at all around the trucking scene across all companies. For some reason my lazy ass did not fill a report on it although I could probably throw out at least three reports per day looking at my collection. Maybe I am just too lazy, maybe it feels like a hopeless battle against wind mills. At the end of the day, it would either banish 90% of the trucking community or just swap out the old grinders with new ones - a risk I am willing to take if it eases my headache everytime I got to see a "one liner" or "0rper" whilst trucking. Personally, I do not mind if you do not wish to roleplay for yourself during very repetitive deliveries and you are all alone, but if there are other players around you? For gods sake - roleplay! Roleplay more than nothing or just a cheap one liner and then zoom off again. Use your brain, drive and park realistically, engage with your surroundings - may it be a small wave to your fellow truckers or having a talk with a business owner you are supplying the fifth time tonight.

 

TL;DR - Trucking is a whole mess and giving one headache from bad roleplay and grind to get rich mentality opposed to proper roleplay, the only things keeping my sanity being solo trucking and the roleplay within a trucking company.

 

But enough of my rant and to the important stuff - how can we improve on these issues? How can we, as a community, make trucking great again? There's three different layers here - the truckers & especially trucking companies, the general population of the server - Law Enforcement, Civilians, Criminals, Mechanics, Customers, Business Owners and then the staff and development team. Three layers, three different angles to bring in ideas and do better around trucking. Some points I have touched up here and there, but I am interested in hearing your opinions and ideas - afterall this is the General Discussions section. One thing I ask of you, however, is to keep it civil. I know I have not been a good role model with my rant starting this thread, but I am striving for constructive criticism and ideas on how to improve this aspect of the server.

Edited October 30, 2020 by orca112
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[Koko]

I am trying trucking (in a trucking company) for the first time ever on this character because it suited him, and I find it very relaxing. I do shift work IRL, which makes my availability come as odd spikes of free time to dedicate to the game. This allows me to have some nice, chill mornings during weekdays with nothing to do, and I like driving around the same routes I prefer (much in the same way, I prefer the longer routes and lonely driving with chatter on the company radio).

 

I always RP, and in fact make it a point to always stop near relevant player-run businesses. I stopped for a snack at Bishop's Chicken in Davis the other day, and later at the Little Seoul LTD to buy a few things. I also RPed deliveries with some shopowners, and then around other general players, and try to chat briefly with fellow truckers (even if I hate emoting about how I'm stacking boxes). Does everyone always RP? Not at all. People dash around farming hard, and this reflects on the numbers that people pull.

 

It's hard to advocate to limit RP when the police is already there to IC stop speeders, but if it were necessary staff could always just check the delivery record of prominent truckers (if it exists somewhere, I suppose). If someone is doing some 100+ deliveries in a day (arbitrary number for arguments' sake), perhaps that's something to look out for.

 

If not, have PD campaign for more traffic checks in key areas as truckers become a worry for the city in-character. I'm sure most veterans know what streets are trucker territories. Cypress Flats I'm looking at you.

[orca112]

Damn, in my whole rant I forgot to add the Sea of Thieves experience, another issue in trucking. You might wonder - what is that experience?

If you ever played Sea of Thieves as a solo sloop, you might feel that tension and an eye on the horizon all time whilst carrying your precious booty to a safe harbour where you can convert it into cash. That is how night trucking feels like. Any vehicle or bike at the horizon feels like another ship that is about to steal your precious booty, preferably at either pickup or delivery - mainly the docks or outfront the various businesses. However, regarding this issue, a suggestion has been brought up and also some potential ideas on how to tackle the prominent robberies on truckers, mostly motivated due to the OOC knowledge of "getting your time worth" with a full $5.000 payout plus items because truckers usually carry large sums of cash with them due to the nature of the trucking script.

> Make the Docks/Terminal a safe zone / crime free area

Quote

Robberies against trucks should be happening while traveling IN-BETWEEN destinations rather than at the heavily secured loading docks.

> Allow trucking costs and profits to be handled through the bank account rather than cash to pull away the OOC motivation of them carrying large amounts of cash with them due to how the trucking script works.

Edited October 28, 2020 by orca112

[mj2002]

I'm not too familiar with trucking, but I'll my limited cents as I see them.

 

First, the current script really paves the way for speeding up as much as possible. As long as the structure is in place, the problem will likely persist. Perhaps you can turn it into a $4000/hour + $500/delivery job + whatever the business pays, and it'd definitely slow people down, but with it, also the interest in trucking at all. With that comes the second part. A lot of truckers aren't interested in trucking, but they're interested in money. If you take that away from trucking, you'll see 90-95% of the truckers disappear with it.

 

Finally, there's just a note I'd like to make, and that's the fact that the zooming Speedo's and the way everyone is in a hurry, is not actually that far from reality. In real life, its just as much of a rat race, but they can't get away with the speeds that you can in GTAW.

[Matt_S]

Thank Goodness someone put the time and effort into speaking about this. As a in game trucker I can 100 percent vouch that some peoples RP is absolutely appalling. Simple things as far as /me 'ing about opening the doors and unloading the crates seems to be heavily missed. If someone does manage to put the "time and effort that typing for 30 seconds is" its usually something as basic as /me starts to unload the crates" which I find incredible annoying.

Spoiler

 

Another thing which is ridiculous is people going 80mph + in the city and going opposite lanes of traffic taking corners like its the Monaco Grand Prix. I understand that we should make reports on this but the process is long and time consuming that and the punishments may not set the situation straight. Of course this is past admin powers to sort ever single occurrence out as they cannot be everywhere at once but I would much rather other truckers take a step back and realize that they are in a rp server with an rp environment and grinding around showing others there incompetence is not Ok. 

[effion]

13 hours ago, orca112 said:

Regardless, I can probably pull a bunch of videos from my unlisted youtube showing subpar roleplay or no roleplay at all around the trucking scene across all companies.

Report them. When they're punished, they will realize to not engage in such activities. If you don't, they won't be afraid and keep doing it as well as tell others to do it like it's fine.

Make a /report, if nobody responds then get proof and submit a player report. If you continue to ignore it, they will think it is OK.

The problem is fixable, it takes a while but it definitely is fixable.

[Woona]

I truck as Samuel Onishi, I've done 130 deliveries since I joined a company ~2 weeks ago. Some people in the same amount of time have gotten well over 250 deliveries, which is absolutely insane to me. There's times where I wasn't confident enough in my role-play abilities and sort improvised some actions, but ever since then I've actually looked around at resources to help me understand. I never did do the "/me unload's the crates" during this period however. I've always built up on my role-play with the best of my abilities, with several of my lines taking ~2-3 250 character lines. With that out of the way, I do share a lot of grievances shared here.

 

I will admit and have amended that for some deliveries I've meta'd and did extremely short lines, though this was three-five orders. I think the lines I did were about, "/me opens the doors to the Boxville and starts unloading the crates.". This is common though for a lot of truckers who grind the job to do this sort of line or even have it shortened to "/me unloads crates". These people have annoyed me since a lot of the orders I will hang around the supplier pickup for about five-ten minutes typing in lines while I'll see five different people come in, do cheap (possibly binded) role-play and leave.

 

After I leave the supplier pick up I always set my speed limiter to be five below the legal speed limit, will avoid residential roads, and avoid active police scenes. Everyone else I seen trucking do not do this and will plow through residential roads at top speed without any regard of their cargo and the people around them. I've seen people in Speedos Express' and Burritos speed in front of me when it doesn't make sense and often will put themselves in danger for the sake of shipment numbers. It's absolutely horrendous when I drive.

 

When I arrive at the shipment location this is where it's an absolute circus. I've seen people completely disregard  lamp posts and plow right into them just to have that sweet spot of being to to scroll back up to /unloadcrate and /sellcrate. I've done this *only* when it makes sense and I'm not going to lie, I do prefer these routes moreso than anything in the county! The role-play quality here varies to people doing the typical "/me unload crate" to not role-playing at all.

 

I understand why people do grind this job though, it's repetitive, but that's not a good justification to completely disregard this server's standard of role-play. I've been told in the GTA:W Discord by Madison Hayes that truckers rush orders because "they're scared of being robbed", "it's boring", ect. Again, there are things you can do make the job interesting, it's a role-play server. The developers shouldn't be the ones who have to make an already great paying job more entertaining for you because you're not interesting at all with what you role-play.

 

If you rush orders because you were like me and KNEW absolutely nothing about trucking and proper standards; ASK PEOPLE. Legitimately this server is such a good resource itself to learn how to actual learn real life knowledge. I'm more than sure anyone who actually role-plays hard with their trucking is more than willing to help you out learn how to truck better and have good /me lines. No one in this server really wants to have anyone get in trouble for poor role-play, so please ask people cause they WILL help you.

[Deeman]

I think the trucking experience depends entirely on the company you are with. Don' get me wrong every company has Speedo drivers to Mule drivers doing one liners, only difference is if you're with a good company they will get you involved with RP that is not only trucking.

 

Take Kazanov Trucking for example, over here we have a security division specifically put in place to ensure drivers are safe, they wait at the pickup zones and escort truckers safely. We also do convoys quite often usually being three Pounder drivers along with multiple other smaller truck drivers. It all depends on the company and how much time management and the owners put in. Nothing is gonma stop the guys that rush it, my only advice would be to don't be apart of that group and do something to try benefit the truckers who need it.

Edited October 29, 2020 by Deeman

[Klag]

All I’m gonna say regarding this matter is that people tend to think that long ass /me’s mean quality RP. Maybe in 2015..

 

If you’re skilled enough to make short /me’s that precisely describe what you are doing, why not? Most of the time less is more. 
 

 

inb4 people gonna start demanding me to rp /me breaths or /me speaks. 

Edited October 29, 2020 by Klag

[MAGAman]

Not a trucker,but I agree with Klag.

 

I cba to write more than the necessary amount in a cohessive manner. If one line or even 4-5 word sentence is enough to get my point across I'm good. Typing filler words to /me's and do's to make it longer doesn't mean that the roleplay is good or people reading your text are more immersed.