Robbery Roleplay

[Ink]

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.

 

Playing RAGE MP as a heavy roleplay experience runs into a paradox: GTA is a real-time game. If a bystander sees something, they react, and their reaction is instantaneous--immediately overwriting whatever "pace" the interrupted roleplay was moving at. This disadvantages everyone, but it really advantages initiators. Instantaneous actions win as long as they follow the server rules, which is why so many players rely on their characters winning conflicts through murder. Being the first one to pull out the gun, or in the event of a shootout to start shooting is usually what wins. It's why robberies and other conflicts always cause Los Santos to look like Cannae.

 

One way to combat this imbalance in the game's mechanics versus our intention to roleplay is to look outside of strictly the game's mechanics and into the mechanics of our roleplay. Assuming it's to be fixed, that means there has to be some agreement among people (usually in the form of rules) about what's conducive to making this server maximally awesome instead of cheapening it every time.

 

Robberies cheapen the experience for everyone almost every time. People can be in the middle of great roleplay, those two players might be on their last hour of gameplay for the night, maybe less. On this server, where you catch people lackin' most often is when they're in the middle of an RP somewhere near their cars or houses, or just outside of a business. Robbers come up, great, now that roleplay has to be thrown to the wayside. Awesome roleplayers can really make robbery RP a fun experience to be a part of. But those lackin' player's nights are now hijacked by this. if anything goes south and it becomes a shootout (police rolled up, backup came, there had to be metagaming!, some randoms got involved) now the rest of the night will be spent in IC/OOC purgatory. Ambulances, police cars, bodies, Fortnite loot, /b conversations, PMs, see you on the forums, green names. 

Why bother with that RP 9 times out of 10? Well, that answer is staring us in the face: up to 5k, maybe some drugs, and please oh god please a PF gun my homies gonna scrape. And sure, not everyone gets off on this, but a lot of people who want to do robbery RP just really enjoy having people at their mercy, and enjoy twisting themselves in myriad ways while they abuse another real, live human being. Or their pixelated avatar, which the real human has to sit there and control. "RP fear." "Stop resisting."

 

RPing can be kinda icky when we don't hold our OOC behavior up to a candle.

 

Robbery RP is usually shit. It usually sucks for everyone most of the time. It usually causes a ton of drama. It usually wastes admin time. It's usually dumb. It's usually barely RP. Bless you people who put in the soul and fun into RPing robbers, but you're way in the minority, and yeah the bad apples fucked it up just like bad apples fuck everyone else up.

 

For instance, as an example? I'd love it if there were more contextual rules about when robberies are allowed and not. That would give possible victims more fair opportunity to understand when they're "in danger" of being randomly targeted for violent and aggressive roleplay. For instance, in the day time you can't just be robbed by more than a cutpurse style tactic (snatch and grab). But at night, you are on your own. That's a very simple rule, of course, and obviously requires more detail, but that's an example of the direction we can move as a community to make it more fun for everyone. That is a conversation we all can be  having right now. 

 

I hate OOC rules getting in the way of RP. But sometimes we have to do these things. It's why there are rules against powergaming, metagaming, and deathmatching. Robberies need to be controlled a little bit more so the community can be better, and so the robbery RP that does happen can be better. With some cool new ground rules, we can start making it so people are more comfortable working with that RP. 

 

It should suck that people don't feel like they can just RP their characters hanging out outside without being a loot pinata criminal characters run around in wolf packs raiding for money and loot without any conscience or moral weight behind the RP. You guys all want this city to feel alive and realistic as much as we can manage with some 400ish players online in Los Santos, right? Don't you want a somewhat more "normal" world for your character to be in so that the fact that they do criminal things be more interesting?

 

Again, @Smilesville hits the nail on the head. Currently, for the victims of robbery their two choices are shoot first or always hide away RPing privately in interiors. Or they trust the robber and RP in good faith until shit goes sideways. It's not creating a fun ecosystem. Normal characters murdering robbers is dumb. Characters hiding inside all day is dumb. As a regular everyday joe character, it's super exhausting OOCly to always be looking around alert knowing that someone can run up at any minute and start forcing your character out of their clothes, or into a car because you are choosing to use the outdoor environment as a backdrop for your RP. 

 

Robbery rules need to be fixed up a bit and it can make this server a lot better for everyone.

 

 

Edited November 27, 2020 by Ink

[Parker]

tbh i'm just sick of every fucking roleplay scenario with someone turning into getting robbed, it's a joke

[The OG Juicebox]

22 minutes ago, Parker said:

tbh i'm just sick of every fucking roleplay scenario with someone turning into getting robbed, it's a joke

I see a lot of reports where gun deals and drug deals always end up as scams or robberies as the end result rather than the deal actually going through. It's a wonder that these deals actually happen 🤣

Edited November 27, 2020 by Juicebox

[yerro]

3 hours ago, Smilesville said:

Never mind that the issue with robberies is of an OOC making - let's address each of these in turn.

1. Why not simply change neighborhood? We have an artificially inflated housing market due to the small number of properties available. Add that to the fact that there's a cap on how much the property can sell for, and you've got a seller's market what borders on no market at all. It's a "rock and a hard place" scenario for the property team. Any further than that, and you're talking about encouraging players to effectively quit the game or play a character who'd thrive in such a city rife with violent crime.
2. Why not report it to the police? Because, as in real life, they're probably not going to catch the person who did it. For reference, muggings have about a 10% clearance rate - that is, they catch up with the perpetrator one in ten times. I'm willing to bet the percentage on the server is even lower - not through any fault of the police, but by the sheer structural advantage robbers have. Not inspiring.
3. What about a neighborhood watch? Most players aren't even aware of who their neighbors are - but not for lack of trying. The number of opportunities you have to interact with your neighbor IRL is far greater than in game. Even if this came into being, however, what good would that do without armed watchmen? Is your solution really for people to form armed neighborhood watch militias?

There's frankly no other response that will register with people who're poorly motivated by an OOC asset grab. When the scales of risk versus reward tip against them and they begin losing guns left and right with nothing to show for it, the frequency of robberies will drop - and at present, that's one of the only IC reactions I can see making an impact on such an OOC issue.

 

I understand you've only been playing for two months or so - that amount of time may not be giving you a proper understanding of the sheer breadth of the issue, which is why I definitely cannot accept the position you take of simply ignoring the issue. That's what most of us have been doing for years. Trust me when I say that if there were an IC solution to the OOC problem, it would have been found.

Again, unrealistic robberies can be reported as such. You were talking about IC solutions and I addressed that part after /you/ brought it up.

 

1. You're contradicting itself with your own arguments. The house market isn't inflated, it's pretty much stuck in the same 100-400k gap due to the MPx3+Furniture rule. I agree that it means the market and real estate roleplay are essentially non-existent, but that's exactly what allows it to resist inflation.

 

2. Again, you're imposing an OOC mindset in an IC situation. If your character continuously experienced threats, you bet they'd go to the police. Instead you're ramping their reaction up to "get a gun and blast them fools, whoever comes up to me looking weird".

 

3. Didn't suggest a neighborhood watch, I suggested bringing it up to the neighbors and addressing the government together through a petition. Or, alternatively, again going to the police with such a petition.

 

You seem keen to blame people for being motivated by an OOC asset grab, but you're also just as guilty in seeing robberies and muggings as harmful content rather than source of roleplay, and your reasoning borders on mixing IC/OOC sometimes.

 

I get it, you've had bad experiences, some pretty severe ones from what it seems. Though you need to acknowledge it's made you have a biased stance on muggings and robberies altogether.

[eTaylor]

15 minutes ago, yerro said:

You seem keen to blame people for being motivated by an OOC asset grab, but you're also just as guilty in seeing robberies and muggings as harmful content rather than source of roleplay, and your reasoning borders on mixing IC/OOC sometimes.

 

I get it, you've had bad experiences, some pretty severe ones from what it seems. Though you need to acknowledge it's made you have a biased stance on muggings and robberies altogether.

People are just quicker to demand a ban (cancel culture) on something they don’t like instead of reporting perpetrators. Of course there’s people asset grabbing, but there’s good roleplay too. Instead of acknowledging that everything is painted with the same negative shade. The same with people scouring reports to propose an argument, it’s just outright use of statistics to bolster weak arguments. You don’t even have a complete data set. People just outright declare “there’s only rip deals!” while there’s absolutely no record of genuine deals. It’s the same as looking to the horizon and declaring the earth is flat. 

[yerro]

14 minutes ago, eTaylor said:

People are just quicker to demand a ban (cancel culture) on something they don’t like instead of reporting perpetrators. Of course there’s people asset grabbing, but there’s good roleplay too. Instead of acknowledging that everything is painted with the same negative shade. The same with people scouring reports to propose an argument, it’s just outright use of statistics to bolster weak arguments. You don’t even have a complete data set. People just outright declare “there’s only rip deals!” while there’s absolutely no record of genuine deals. It’s the same as looking to the horizon and declaring the earth is flat. 

Well, I'm not attacking Smilesville, and I'm not trying to tell them that poor OOC behavior in robberies from the criminal side is alright. But he's clearly going over the edge with generalizing /every/ single person involved in robbery roleplay on the criminal side as a bad apple in the community, seeking nothing but to grow their OOC assets.

 

I mean that doesn't even make sense to me since chaining robberies isn't allowed and admins are quick to shut that down, and 5k a robbery doesn't even begin to compare to welfare paychecks you can get for working at a 24/7 like in Davis.

 

You're right though — there is and has always been an issue with people assuming the worst about the other side in conflicts in RP. I really love how far GTA W has come — returning to GTA RP after a 7-year break surprised me as to how there's fewer /b arguments, there's more openness and maturity, but imo it's still not enough.

 

Just as GTA W has managed to instill a lot of good principles like staying IC & always RPing in the community, they need to work to instill respect for other roleplayers. Just because someone's driving a sports car, doesn't mean they're a mallrat. They might have legitimate reasons for doing so. Heck, they might've stolen that car for all you'd know — but discarding their roleplay and their worth as roleplayers based on these presumptions? That's something that kills any chance of good RP happening.

 

Survivorship bias is also a valid point — looking at what went wrong without acknowledging what went right is something people tend to do a lot. I'm willing to bet that there are a lot of good mugging experiences in the community if you're willing to be open to it. And not to go around in circles, but if you're taking the very idea of getting robbed as a bad type of roleplay, no good roleplay is going to come out of it.

---

To reiterate in a tl;dr, yes, there are issues with robberies. I liked someone saying on Discord, "if you have to ask people not to stall in /b, then perhaps you're doing it wrong in the first place".

 

I would agree with some direct suggestions, for example, adding it to the rules that players have to take their environment into account when engaging in violent crimes. I agree that there are certain issues with robberies happening in neighborhoods like Mirror Park in broad daylight.

 

I disagree with painting robbery RP as OOC asset grabbing.

Edited November 27, 2020 by yerro

[Smilesville]

52 minutes ago, yerro said:

1. You're contradicting itself with your own arguments. The house market isn't inflated, it's pretty much stuck in the same 100-400k gap due to the MPx3+Furniture rule. I agree that it means the market and real estate roleplay are essentially non-existent, but that's exactly what allows it to resist inflation.

 

2. Again, you're imposing an OOC mindset in an IC situation. If your character continuously experienced threats, you bet they'd go to the police. Instead you're ramping their reaction up to "get a gun and blast them fools, whoever comes up to me looking weird".

 

3. Didn't suggest a neighborhood watch, I suggested bringing it up to the neighbors and addressing the government together through a petition. Or, alternatively, again going to the police with such a petition.

 

You seem keen to blame people for being motivated by an OOC asset grab, but you're also just as guilty in seeing robberies and muggings as harmful content rather than source of roleplay, and your reasoning borders on mixing IC/OOC sometimes.

 

I get it, you've had bad experiences, some pretty severe ones from what it seems. Though you need to acknowledge it's made you have a biased stance on muggings and robberies altogether.

1. When the inflated price of a property exceeds the max sale value set by the rules, they simply don't sell. That's what you're seeing. That's why it's nigh on impossible to simply "move out" of an area.
2. The prevalence and poor quality of robberies is an OOC issue. Proposing IC solutions to an OOC issue does not work. That was my point. I literally said this at the top.
3. See point #2.

Again - I can say with absolute certainty that the vast majority of robberies are detriments, not credits, to RP. That behavior is driven by a metagame surrounding the current state of the rules. Until that changes, the motivations for robbery will not change, and the server's atmosphere will continue to suffer because of script greed. If someone is truly partaking in robberies for the RP value, they will continue to do so regardless of their script profitability. It follows that any well intentioned player should not be against the sorts of changes proposed to imbue robbery attempts with greater risk.

 

I don't have a biased stance against muggings and robberies. I have a biased stance against metagaming to give yourself an unrealistic script advantage. The fact that this coincides with the vast majority of robberies is ancillary to my core concern - and I'm not about to treat the issue with kid gloves.

[eTaylor]

11 minutes ago, Smilesville said:

Again - I can say with absolute certainty that the vast majority of robberies are detriments, not credits, to RP. That behavior is driven by a metagame surrounding the current state of the rules. Until that changes, the motivations for robbery will not change, and the server's atmosphere will continue to suffer because of script greed. If someone is truly partaking in robberies for the RP value, they will continue to do so regardless of their script profitability. It follows that any well intentioned player should not be against the sorts of changes proposed to imbue robbery attempts with greater risk.

 

I don't have a biased stance against muggings and robberies. I have a biased stance against metagaming to give yourself an unrealistic script advantage. The fact that this coincides with the vast majority of robberies is ancillary to my core concern - and I'm not about to treat the issue with kid gloves.

This server suffers from a disease predominately found in the minds of those who believe they are in control of the world their character embodies. I’m talking about people who log on, and refuse to acknowledge that the world around them does and should influence and effect their character. This is something that happens in every aspect. The criminal gangbanger who’s already following an OOC predetermined path instead of organically living the gang life, but also the business owner who didn’t plan for a robbery and thus refuses to accept it. You can’t control these things, if you get a gun upped in your face it’s not suppose to be an inconvenience it’s something that happens to your character. It’s something that should develop your character. Yes, you may just leave your house to go to a party but that doesn’t mean you’ll make it there. Just because your day got thwarted by an encounter you didn’t account for doesn’t mean your roleplay is “ruined”.
 

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? 

[yerro]

13 minutes ago, Smilesville said:

1. When the inflated price of a property exceeds the max sale value set by the rules, they simply don't sell. That's what you're seeing. That's why it's nigh on impossible to simply "move out" of an area.
2. The prevalence and poor quality of robberies is an OOC issue. Proposing IC solutions to an OOC issue does not work. That was my point. I literally said this at the top.
3. See point #2.

Again - I can say with absolute certainty that the vast majority of robberies are detriments, not credits, to RP. That behavior is driven by a metagame surrounding the current state of the rules. Until that changes, the motivations for robbery will not change, and the server's atmosphere will continue to suffer because of script greed. If someone is truly partaking in robberies for the RP value, they will continue to do so regardless of their script profitability. It follows that any well intentioned player should not be against the sorts of changes proposed to imbue robbery attempts with greater risk.

 

I don't have a biased stance against muggings and robberies. I have a biased stance against metagaming to give yourself an unrealistic script advantage. The fact that this coincides with the vast majority of robberies is ancillary to my core concern - and I'm not about to treat the issue with kid gloves.

1. What I'm saying is you can't make money through real estate and that's a problem — for obvious reasons, real estate pays well IRL. However, all houses are essentially priced the same around 200k to 300k, so moving elsewhere IC'ly is an option. Hell, you could roleplay renting your house out to someone else and find an apartment to rent in a different part of the city.

 

2. You were discussing the IC solution and that is your character getting a gun. I was telling you that you're jumping to the conclusion that getting a gun is the ONLY way a character can deal with robberies, and that tells of a faulty play-to-win OOC mindset on your behalf.

 

3. See point #2.

Look, I don't think you're getting the point here and if you're keen on staying this way, I can't do anything to change that. You need to work on your issues with trusting other players to RP well, that's what it all ultimately comes down to.

[Vash Baldeus]

On 11/26/2020 at 5:07 AM, Martyn said:

Amen, on a hardcore roleplay server? If your character purposely and consciously makes the decision to rob people in a country where there's more firearms than people. The person taking the obvious and conscious decision to still risk their lives at performing said action should be subject to a CK if the person who defends themselves from said hostile action did it through a none PG action. Not only will this ensure the robber takes more a more realistic precaution and approach to robberies. It will most certainly even the playing field. If your character isn't willing to risk his own life by risking some another persons life. Perhaps your character should reconsider his choices. Only this way, can we expect realistic behavior from people.  There's no other way to accomplish this. 

 

At the same time, legal roleplayers should start to realize a CCW will not help you in robbery situations as 9/10 times you'll have a gun pointed at you before you'll be able to withdraw your own. And most of the time, it's your gun they're after anyway. Not your cash, not your phone. But your PF weapon. That's what they all aim for. That's what they're doing it for, to either arm up yet another individual to continue their spree later on. Or to sell it for high profits.

 

Start carrying nothing but a little amount of cash, and your phone. That's the way to do it at the moment since this is slowly becoming Gotham City roleplay. Where everyone's a bad ass. And nobody's vulnerable. 

Along with it being 2020, with CAMERAS literary everywhere? Lets be honest, people should take into account of being seen.