Robbery Roleplay

[DasFroggy]

8 hours ago, Ink said:

Some players roleplay robberies very well, and understand the give-and-take that should be happening on a level of OOC courtesy. This is often to their detriment because of the pacing of the game we're roleplaying in.

It has always been a personal opinion that if the mugger is willing to give and entertain in a roleplay encounter, I would have ample reason to offer help in return, such as choosing a more remote location for the roleplay to take place. 

 

If the roleplay is actually enjoyable, rescue is not needed - they can take my valuables and be scary; as long as they are willing to allow me to actually roleplay, I am willing to stack the odds in their favor.

[Smilesville]

6 hours ago, yerro said:

-snip-

I'll take the armchair psychology under advisement.

The fact remains that the server has a problem - and will continue to have the problem until the scales with regards to the risks to robberies are balanced.

 

6 hours ago, eTaylor said:

Also the proposed artificial “risk” that I am to loose my character for committing a robbery is stupid IMO. Surely there are other ways to incentivize good roleplay instead of trying to outright ban and scare people off. The asset grabbing types aren’t the ones to really care about a CK or anything, these measures hurt the wrong people. And theft, burglary and by extension the occasional robbery are important parts to my roleplay. I’ve never really had a complaint about my roleplay, the only time I did have a bump was when I encountered somebody who said they had just been robbed not 5 minutes ago, and that they wanted to log off. Why should I be punished and subjected to incredibly aggressive and disproportionate control demotivators? 

The CK idea is only effective in conjunction with a 40 hour minimum. That is - I don't expect an asset grabbing minimalist to be concerned that they're being CK'd, but rather that they'll not only 1) lose all the assets they've robbed for until now, but 2) have to wait another 40 hours on a new character if they're inclined to go back to the same thing. Understand that robbers already have an outsized advantage under the current system.

Just because your typical style of play was changed by the addition of more rules doesn’t mean your roleplay is “ruined." If you do it for the roleplay, there's nothing in what I've suggested that should stop you from acting as you always have - but let's not pretend that the current state of affairs with regards to robbery is remotely realistic.

[eTaylor]

1 hour ago, Smilesville said:

The CK idea is only effective in conjunction with a 40 hour minimum. That is - I don't expect an asset grabbing minimalist to be concerned that they're being CK'd, but rather that they'll not only 1) lose all the assets they've robbed for until now, but 2) have to wait another 40 hours on a new character if they're inclined to go back to the same thing. Understand that robbers already have an outsized advantage under the current system.

Just because your typical style of play was changed by the addition of more rules doesn’t mean your roleplay is “ruined." If you do it for the roleplay, there's nothing in what I've suggested that should stop you from acting as you always have - but let's not pretend that the current state of affairs with regards to robbery is remotely realistic.

I’d most definitely consider it a negative issue towards myself since this would only encourage people to start asspulling  guns during robberies, if this is a thing I should be able to CK my victims just as hard. And I’m also expecting different results than you, let me outline what I believe you expect is going to happen versus what I see happening. You want to impose a significant risk factor in an effort to dissuade people from committing robberies, and to make it so that the profitability is matched with severe consequences. Those consequences are the removal of your roleplay and character, and a 40 hour ban. In your vision this would significantly push back robberies, and give you the ability to kill off and punish those who still do robberies, with the idea that once dead they never come back. Robberies become more realistic in frequency and conduct, and everyone is happy.

I see something else, and I base my opinion on personal experiences from other servers that had similar interventions. Adding a rule in this form would significantly decrease the roleplay quality surrounding robberies because those who care for the roleplay would most likely avoid it all together. The profitability doesn’t change, and robberies would still remain a lucrative farming activity. You’d be left with asset grabbers who see it just like that. With the absence of an alternative you won’t sway them to stop. I can imagine their methods changing to adapt to the risk, as adaptation is a natural phenomenon. That adaptation would most likely express itself in more robbers, with more guns and a significantly highest likelihood of you getting killed. Because the stakes are much higher, any twitch or delay could so easily be misconstrued to justify murder. I don’t foresee this rule improving things for the better. 
 

I’d be much more comfortable with a permission based system or where having to justify your motivations become a significant point so that people who just do it for kicks and stuff are held accountable, and aid in enforcement of good roleplay.

 

[Smilesville]

1 hour ago, eTaylor said:

Adding a rule in this form would significantly decrease the roleplay quality surrounding robberies because those who care for the roleplay would most likely avoid it all together. The profitability doesn’t change, and robberies would still remain a lucrative farming activity. You’d be left with asset grabbers who see it just like that. With the absence of an alternative you won’t sway them to stop. I can imagine their methods changing to adapt to the risk, as adaptation is a natural phenomenon. That adaptation would most likely express itself in more robbers, with more guns and a significantly highest likelihood of you getting killed. Because the stakes are much higher, any twitch or delay could so easily be misconstrued to justify murder. I don’t foresee this rule improving things for the better. 

Considering the current state of how robberies are conducted, there's not much roleplay quality in robberies for us to lose to begin with - the silver lining being that the only way for us to go is up. The changes I've proposed are indeed intended to shift the incentive structure in that anyone who's involved with multiple robberies is at risk of the CK that could come along with it.

 

It shifts us in the direction of aligning character and player interests together, forcing them to ask themselves, "is it really worth my life to go rob someone of these things?" This encourages robbers to know exactly what they're going for and to do a little research in pursuit of that aim, as opposed to blocking anyone they meet in a garage with their luxury SUV.

 

Let me outline exactly what I'm trying to address with each suggestion:

1. The forced CK of robbers who die in the commission of their crime is designed to introduce risk back into the robbery game. Currently, the vast majority of robbers use the metagame developed surrounding hostile interactions as a script to generate more money, guns, etc rather than a roleplaying opportunity. Introducing a risk of ruin, a chance to lose everything, throws a wrench into the profit calculations and deters chain robbery as a result. The careful and calculated robber doing it for the RP, on the other hand, doesn't suffer nearly the same amount of risk.
2. The 40 hour minimum for a character to begin robbery is designed to curb those who would CK, come back, and immediately resume robbing in the same manner as before. I'm willing to accept that 10 or 20 hours would be a better alternative, but the logic behind choosing 40 is that's when the starter paychecks end.

There will definitely be an adjustment period.

 

It's still against the rules for your victim to suddenly gun you down while they themselves are at gunpoint. Staff rulings on the permissible set of reactions to fall within 'fear RP' probably won't change. We'll merely have a systemic safeguard against poorly executed robberies.

 

If you're an unlucky robber who actually roleplays your encounter but fate conspires against you in a particular robbery? That's unfortunate, but surrender is an option once the tables have turned. Violent crime tends to produce a lot of people who die young, so we can't say it's unrealistic for us to attach this level of risk to the act.

 

1 hour ago, eTaylor said:

I’d be much more comfortable with a permission based system or where having to justify your motivations become a significant point so that people who just do it for kicks and stuff are held accountable, and aid in enforcement of good roleplay.

While I absolutely agree with this point (and this would probably be the ideal,) I've personally experienced how difficult it is to have /breakin requests looked at. If what we're proposing works in that manner, I suspect it'll do more to hinder robbery RP than my suggestion ever would. I'm not a fan of requiring staff permission every time a player wants to do something remotely adversarial - and I suspect they aren't either. Even if we abandon the idea of full supervision and say you can use a command to convey your motivations to staff and immediately begin your robbery, that doesn't add anything we wouldn't get on the first page of a report.

 

It's my observation, then, that the premise of the issue is this: while chain robbers who don't properly roleplay are a detriment to the server, we need an automated set of incentives to deal with the issue - lest the already cumbersome mechanisms we have to communicate with staff become even more so. Lowering robbery limits even further is silly to think about.

 

So what say we try the establishment of zones within which robberies are automatically approved, versus other zones in which they require specific approval and/or are not permitted altogether? Coupled with a milder version of what I've suggested, I can see this making a big impact.

 

To summarize, how about this?

1. If a robber is killed or arrested in the commission of a robbery, they cannot perform another robbery for 20 in-character hours. Throw in a command for players to use on each other as robbers and robbed to make it easier to flag when robberies take place, as well as generate logs for easy report sorting.
2. Zones are established and separated into auto-acceptance zones, ask first zones, and violent crime free zones. (To be frank, I always thought it was silly you couldn't break into a car outside a police station, considering how often it happens in real life.)

Edited November 27, 2020 by Smilesville

[yerro]

1 hour ago, Smilesville said:

1. The forced CK of robbers who die in the commission of their crime is designed to introduce risk back into the robbery game. Currently, the vast majority of robbers use the metagame developed surrounding hostile interactions as a script to generate more money, guns, etc rather than a roleplaying opportunity. Introducing a risk of ruin, a chance to lose everything, throws a wrench into the profit calculations and deters chain robbery as a result. The careful and calculated robber doing it for the RP, on the other hand, doesn't suffer nearly the same amount of risk.
2. The 40 hour minimum for a character to begin robbery is designed to curb those who would CK, come back, and immediately resume robbing in the same manner as before. I'm willing to accept that 10 or 20 hours would be a better alternative, but the logic behind choosing 40 is that's when the starter paychecks end.

 

Huge fat no.

 

Forced CKs don't make people roleplay better, they make people afraid of interacting with others. On the other hand though, I get how someone with your background would love that — after all, you seem more eager to shut down others' roleplay attempts and shield yourself from interactions you don't have the ability to dictate.

 

Secondly, if someone is roleplaying a robbery poorly, you can take screenshots (or even a video) and report them. It doesn't matter if they have 1 hour on their account or a thousand — admins are happy to take action and guide the player to RP better next time.

 

Your personal hatred of the robbers is your problem, not the server's.

[Illusory]

1 hour ago, yerro said:

Huge fat no.

 

Forced CKs don't make people roleplay better, they make people afraid of interacting with others. On the other hand though, I get how someone with your background would love that — after all, you seem more eager to shut down others' roleplay attempts and shield yourself from interactions you don't have the ability to dictate.

 

Secondly, if someone is roleplaying a robbery poorly, you can take screenshots (or even a video) and report them. It doesn't matter if they have 1 hour on their account or a thousand — admins are happy to take action and guide the player to RP better next time.

 

Your personal hatred of the robbers is your problem, not the server's.

 

It's an RPQM issue. It's the nice neighbourhood equivalent of rich characters living in Davis and parking Cheetah Classics in their driveway. It's not realistic in the context we're talking about and while yes you can report people for robberies that don't make sense, if people didn't illogically rob everyone they saw standing outside we could avoid that all together.

 

Imagine living in a good neighbourhood and being afraid of standing on your front lawn for too long because a group of armed gunmen will roll up in a lease vehicle and shake you down / kill you if they don't get what they want. Now imagine this happening hourly (thankfully since this thread got created for some reason it's magically gone down a considerable amount, crazy). This is America.

 

40 hour minimum for felonies such as this. That's basically the only solution. Every character who robs me is a nobody alt with like 10 hours and a PF gun they got from uh.. 'a friend', etc.

Edited November 27, 2020 by Sush

[Valkyria]

4 minutes ago, Sush said:

40 hour minimum for felonies such as this. That's basically the only solution. Every character who robs me is a nobody alt with like 10 hours and a PF gun they got from uh.. 'a friend', etc.

The fabled "how did you get the gun?" and that gun allegedly holding no relevance.

 

The robberies I've been a part of (two) have been absolutely atrocious roleplay. The first one, I went out shooting, and despite injuring literally every party and killing one, their initial response was to loot the bodies, not even bothering to take care of their own injuries or anything of the sorts. One of the robbers had ten switchblades on him, and they rolled up on me on sports bikes. Naturally, the dead guy's gun went back to the dead guy after respawning. 🙄 🙄

 

No roleplay regarding their severe injuries, just robo-looting and /b showitems despite doing a vague /me pats down.

 

The second robbery happened in Paleto Bay, by characters from South LS rolling four-deep.

Robbing a Detective (on duty, with a very visible badge) just because they saw me pass an ammu-nation. Naturally, they were very dissatisfied with the lack of weapons. The roleplay was, again, extremely poor. (Especially with them flying off the edge of a cliff just to keep evading so they don't lose their guns.)

 

I'd definitely like the whole 40 hours minimum for serious felonies like so. It's always some alt with a gun they got from a friend or a gun that's not relevant at all.

[keep]

8 hours ago, Wirbelwind said:

The robberies I've been a part of (two) have been absolutely atrocious roleplay. The first one, I went out shooting, and despite injuring literally every party and killing one, their initial response was to loot the bodies, not even bothering to take care of their own injuries or anything of the sorts. One of the robbers had ten switchblades on him, and they rolled up on me on sports bikes. Naturally, the dead guy's gun went back to the dead guy after respawning. 🙄 🙄

 

No roleplay regarding their severe injuries, just robo-looting and /b showitems despite doing a vague /me pats down.

 

The second robbery happened in Paleto Bay, by characters from South LS rolling four-deep.

Robbing a Detective (on duty, with a very visible badge) just because they saw me pass an ammu-nation. Naturally, they were very dissatisfied with the lack of weapons. The roleplay was, again, extremely poor. (Especially with them flying off the edge of a cliff just to keep evading so they don't lose their guns.)

It will keep happening for as long as guns are scarce and pricey.

[Koko]

The most important thing has already been said: a lot of this urgency comes from people RPing robberies in unrealistic locations, and also using OOC knowledge of OOC limitations, period (particularly knowing that being held at knife/gunpoint is a free win). I've personally had a knife pulled on me twice IRL and twice I defended myself. I come from a place where a lot of people around me have had knives pulled on them and (successfully) defended themselves. I probably wouldn't mess with a gun, but I don't know, I didn't grow up in a place with guns and I've literally never touched a gun beyond a BB rifle.

 

If you RP mugging someone in the middle of a massive boulevard at gunpoint then in real terms you'd have a bunch of the public reacting to it, running, screaming  and the police called on you instantly by half a dozen bystanders (I don't care if it's in Rancho, people even in violent neighborhoods IRL call the cops). The problem will always be that regardless of what rules change, a subsection of the population will find a way to make robberies into a farm again. If people start reporting after being mugged in unrealistic locations, people will shift the goalposts and the next meta will be to quick-kidnap people and drive them away like we were in Brazil (which already happens). Ultimately I just don't want to feel that as a civilian I'm being farmed, because that's not particularly representative to me (personally) of what a Heavy Roleplay text server is.

 

If people want to risk a CK by pulling a gun on an armed robber, in my opinion that should be their choice. If they get killed they should definitely be in for a CK, but I just disagree with the idea that all robberies at gunpoint in all circumstances should completely disable all targets. And this is coming from someone who has little interest in giving their character a gun to begin with, I'm all for getting robbed as long as it's not in dumb circumstances.

Edited November 27, 2020 by Koko

[AM]

The solution to poor robbery RP certainly ain't making guns flow like water. Used to be like that when I first joined during FiveRP's collapse and eventual merger, and boy it certainly just made everything far worse. The 40 hour minimum seems like it'd curb a lot of just fresh alts getting ahold of transferred PFs, which is good. I personally think that poor robbery RP and, tied in with that, the sheer amount of extreme ultraviolence that just gets employed freely in nearly every situation as a solution is moreso a problem regarding the concept of escalation. Which, seemingly, does not exist in the state of San Andreas.