How does someone get out of extortion?

[Koko]

To be honest, I've been pretty lucky. I run a Food Truck in front of the Rancho projects, which is probably the least lucrative business in the game because I do it for the RP aspect. I don't break even to begin with because I have no business script access. Unless I'm tipped generously by someone kind, any one shift is me essentially paying to work for my own OOC enjoyment.

 

So far I have only had one attempt at extortion by a group of teenagers and it went surprisingly well. My character called their bluff on them having been sent to collect tribute in the name of a gang, and they all got cold feet when he asked "ok which gang". Which is great, because if I get extorted bad I will have to abandon my RP because I'll go from making zero money to opening in order to lose money.

 

[Entity]

9 hours ago, Chipsdose said:

What does this have anything to do with Common Courtesy or realismus? If you experience something unrealistic ingame from an encounter with someone or whatever it is you are free to report them on the forums. That's literally what forum reports are for. You don't need a line on the rule book for every unrealistic encounter you can possibly have otherwise the rule book would consist of 100 pages with 1000000000 words, because you can't put every single rule in there without making it too big. That's what rule 1 is for, to put everything which isn't listed there under one rule. 

Like I said, if someone is extorting you and you think it wasn't approached realisticly then report them on the forums. This is a server where realismus is taking seriously and the admins follow this as well, so they would gladly help you out with it and make things fair for you.

That's an example. I used an example to make my point clearer. The problem with your argument is that realism is subjective - from my point of view, something might be realistic. From yours it might be highly unrealistic. If I explain my point of view, you may understand it and that something would become realistic for you too. Realism is not set in stone and that's why applying a general rule to a very specific scenario doesn't work. Unfortunately, you can defend bad roleplay with a good explanation.  

 

No, you don't need a rule for every single type of encounter you might have. I said that in my original response as well - you do need a rule if that type of action is common. Extortion is common and porly executed extortion is very common.

 

That's literally how the law (and society) works in real life - it doesn't say anywhere that you're not allowed to decapitate a clown at midnight but it does say that it's illegal to kill somebody. That's enough to make you not decapitate a clown at midnight. The law doesn't just say don't do bad stuff (which is basically the Common Courtesy rule) because that's too vague.

 

Again, writing a rule about extortion is not a big deal and would clear up a lot of issues. The way it currently works, by reporting what you think is unrealistic, is clearly not the solution - if this was the solution, we wouldn't have this discussion right now. It doesn't work. The only reason why you could be this against the staff team writing a few lines about how extortion should and shouldn't happen is because you may be one of the people who runs around extorting everyone. Who would be the vehemently protesting implementing a rule? Someone whose actions would break that rule. If you're not doing that, then I really don't see what the issue with having a rule for extortion is.

[Chipsdose]

3 hours ago, Entity said:

The way it currently works, by reporting what you think is unrealistic, is clearly not the solution - if this was the solution, we wouldn't have this discussion right now. It doesn't work.

Show me where an admin didn't do anything against poor extortion attempts/poor roleplay after someone reported those. You joined this forum 6 days ago, how do you want to know that?

[Entity]

2 hours ago, Chipsdose said:

Show me where an admin didn't do anything against poor extortion attempts/poor roleplay after someone reported those. You joined this forum 6 days ago, how do you want to know that?

How long I've been around for has nothing to do with the validity of my answers and arguments. I can, hypothetically, know more about a specific subject after a day than someone else does after a year. I've seen people complain about extortion, both in-game and on the forums. I've seen people deal with extortion, I've seen people literally close their businesses (and refuse to open others) because they didn't want to deal with all this. I've been first hand been involved in multiple extortion attempts, none of them were realistic - I've had three groups of people come to my business in one day and 'offer protection'.

 

The first one was on behalf of a large illegal faction - they literally stormed in, had no idea what the business was or who the owner was, demanded to speak to the manager. They literally said they would 'pick up our trash and deal with the people with automatic weapons who are trying to assault our business' once a week. Also said their garbage men have their own automatic weapons. We refused and that person then threatened to call up his friends and burn our business down right there, on the stop. We ended up killing him. He started complaining OOCly and we did end up reporting him - the admin sided with us, that was it.

 

Two hours later, another large illegal faction stopped by to extort us. This time they were violent. Again, had no idea what the business was, who the manager was or anything. Demanded to speak to the manager, shoved me in the wall and demanded ten thousand dollars on the stop, with a weekly payment. Mind you, that's roughly 75% of the profits we had at the time. They also said we have to follow a new opening schedule. Now trust me, I'm not fine with having to choose between owning a business and not going to college in real life in order to be able to open the business  because some random mobsters won't allow me to do it in my free time.

 

Half an hour later, two random gangbangers from a small faction stopped by and did the exact same thing. We refused, they literally stole $400,000 worth of vehicles that belonged to the business one hour after we closed down. This was all in a day.

 

There we multiple other attempts, the business closed the next week. That's my own personal experience. We did report - the admin dealt with the people - what did that fix? Nothing. The issue still persists. Or what's the alternative? Opening a business whenever some random person wants, making literally no money (basically opening a business in order to lose money) and having to deal with that? Or just literally report 90% of these extortion attempts? Do we have to start putting an hour a day on hold and continuously document everything as well as write N essays a day in order to file reports and respond to reports? Is that what GTA World is? All of this because having a specific rule against it is what, hard to do? Again, the only reason why you would be against this is if you were one of the people practicing this low-quality extortion RP and implementing such rule would force you to stop.

 

I'm not saying that everyone is the same, not at all. There's people who practice extortion realistically, but they're as common as realistic robberies are. They happen every now and then but most of them do it for the money, not the character development and they aren't good. At least we have rules for robberies - imagine people driving into you on the street in the middle of the night and robbing you. What would you do? Report them? And say what, that it's not realistic? They can easily argue that it's very realistic and a very convenient way to rob someone. That's how subjectivity creates confusion and bigger problems arise. Why can we have an outlined rule on robberies but not on extortion (or at least part of the rule).

 

I can't show you where an admin did nothing about this specific type of situation because I am not going to go through hundreds of pages of reports. What I can show you, though, is the issue which still persists. If the solution is just reporting them and they get dealt with, then the solution isn't good - or else we wouldn't have this problem right now. But we do have this problem and people are upset. It's the same as saying that a city has already fixed homelessness while there's homeless people on every street corner. Just because there's a solution it doesn't mean that the problem stops existing. In exactly the same way, reporting poor extortion RP didn't seem to fix the issue.

[DasFroggy]

4 hours ago, Chipsdose said:

Show me where an admin didn't do anything

It is actually fairly commonplace for reports to fall in between the cracks, regardless of severity. Forums reports are largely a luck of the draw.

 

This is something I know with certainty, as I read the reports forum every. single. day. while I am at work, and there are still forum reports that go unanswered after weeks, or even an entire month of waiting.

 

...and before you say "I exclusively meant reports regarding extortion!" I am going to point out that the variety of reports forgotten and buried are universally encompassing. Players have had forgotten reports involving events that have removed their characters from play until resolution, of which some never came at all (and thus, they had to abandon said characters, social connections, jobs, businesses, effectively shutting down entire webs of roleplay for dozens of other people).

 

...and you are not even addressing the point - criminal roleplay quality in general is dropping, and reports are not effectively discouraging it from happening. If they were, then we would not be here discussing it, as there would be nothing to complain about. Tragically it is quite the opposite - bad roleplayers are creating significant disruptions in roleplay, and nobody in the criminal roleplay world seems interested in stopping them and pointing out that it is causing significant problems for the community overall.

 

If you are not interested in addressing the problems, that is fine, but that does not stop the problems from existing. We will continue to discuss those problems, with or without you.

[Chipsdose]

@Entity If you are getting this often extorted where it gets like to a daily routine of an opening then I would honestly do a /report ingame during the scene, tell the admin which picks it up your story and see what happens. He might void it for you and speak to the criminals. Also why are they shoving you against a wall on the first meeting and being violent and all? Why does it all escalate so fast? That's not even extorting what they did. That's literally robbing the place and requires admin allowness. What they did will get them in huge trouble if they didn't get one from an admin. 

Quote

Before performing a business robbery (entering a nightclub to rob everyone) you must notify the administration team with a /report and wait for their acknowledgment, as we do not want these to happen on a regular basis and it must be very well roleplayed.

 

Also those factions are being investigated by illegal management all the time where bans and whole factions are being closed down due to unrealistic roleplay. See for example the Albanian faction which got closed down last week for very poor roleplay. If you were a victim of them you can still report them and they are going to give you a full refund of all your lost items. At some point the admins are going to catch up with bad roleplay and you are going to get your stuff back. 

 

Quote

Faction will be fully ICly closed in 1 week following the death of Kutjim Neziri ICly. Many conflicts led to multiple factions tracking all the remaining members alive, thus for your characters' safety you'll be asked to roleplay leaving the city during that week as fast as possible. Any deaths during this week will be a full character kill.

 

After the end of the week, all characters will need to cease to roleplay as a group. Lone characters are allowed to be roleplayed if following this IC narrative.

 

On the OOC side, the faction is fully closed and the group is forbidden to ever recreate a faction together. We'll deliver official warnings on the account of all members to ensure that you'll not roleplay the same concept in the future nor create another faction of yours.

The roleplay shown the past months was abysmal and even worse the past weeks, not up to the server standards at all. On top of the poor roleplay shown, the leadership of this faction has actively recruited former members of the previous Albanian faction which was already closed for poor roleplay and asked to fully disband and not play together again.

These players just created another albanian character and joined this group.

 

To all players who have been a victim of poor interactions and roleplay, please submit individual reports on each members through player reports on top of the faction reports sent.

 

[Chipsdose]

55 minutes ago, DasFroggy said:

Forums reports are largely a luck of the draw.

I know what you mean, but let me explain you something.

 

Someone makes a report against someone and writes like half a book in the report. Then the person alarms the reported party. The main person comes and replies with another book story. Then the reported party gets mad because they didn't like what he wrote. I mean you are reporting someone because you both don't share the same oppinion about something, of course the reported party isn't just going to write "Yeah, I did this, punish me." So the party which reported is going to reply again, pointing out all the stuff the guy wrote with another book story. Then the reported party gets mad and replies again, starting a nonsense back and fourth where 90% of the content was already said before. Reported party got so mad that he calls his friend over to fix the report up a bit. "Hey John, add your story to it as well, we only at page 5 yet," John comes and adds his sauce to the report. "Yeah, Yeah. I'm John, I can 100% agree to what person above said and also...." adds like another book story and at some point the report is at like page 50 and nobody thinks about "Oh, someone actually has to read this still who doesn't have anything to do with the whole situation." 

 

Jokes aside, if you do a short report, let the reported party answer and then wait for an admin then I promise you it's going to be done after 1 day!

[eTaylor]

Courtesy on reports are sometimes nowhere to be found. You don’t need 1000 words to explain your problem. If the admin wants to know more he or she will ask. 
 

I think just think the LSPD and LSSD should be able to do more enforcement more efficiently. Extorting a large company or chain franchise that’s entirely legal should bare consequences, that’s the best deterrent. Extortion a shady pawnshop who has illicit activities themselves should be subjected to extortion logically. 

[DasFroggy]

32 minutes ago, Chipsdose said:

I know what you mean,

Good. Glad we can agree that reports can go unnoticed, and that regardless of length, reports are not adequately suppressing the poor roleplay.

 

Now that we understand each other, we can begin discussing how best to approach an issue that is becoming more severe every day - extortion (and to some degree, criminal) roleplay needs to be fixed, as the current approach is negatively impacting the roleplay community as a whole.

 

A new solution is needed.

Edited December 24, 2020 by DasFroggy

[DoomedAmerica]

13 hours ago, Koko said:

To be honest, I've been pretty lucky. I run a Food Truck in front of the Rancho projects, which is probably the least lucrative business in the game because I do it for the RP aspect. I don't break even to begin with because I have no business script access. Unless I'm tipped generously by someone kind, any one shift is me essentially paying to work for my own OOC enjoyment.

 

So far I have only had one attempt at extortion by a group of teenagers and it went surprisingly well. My character called their bluff on them having been sent to collect tribute in the name of a gang, and they all got cold feet when he asked "ok which gang". Which is great, because if I get extorted bad I will have to abandon my RP because I'll go from making zero money to opening in order to lose money.

 

hehe Demond Brown?