Excessive Robberies in Blaine County

[DLimit]

6 minutes ago, Ted said:

This is an incredibly good point. Frankly everyone here arguing for militancy and arming further have these robbers watering at the mouth. Much of what people seem to advocate for is making Sandy Shores into a some sort of Sundown County, or just generally more militant. This just isn't realistic to the area. People have literally suggested sitting out on their porch with a shotgun. People seem to think that Sandy Shores is some bumfuck hillbilly town. I live in a bumfuck rural town with four-thousand people in it. Nobody is sitting on their porch with a shotgun. People seem to be advocating for dming these robbers, which isn't the solution, and frankly, will only make the admin's jobs more difficult. Militant-esc RP in Sandy Shores is not realistic, not is it good roleplay, nor will it fix the situation. It's an excuse for people in Sandy to DM. I understand "people are reacting IC!" and that is the issue. Bad RP begets more Bad RP, that doesn't make bad RP okay. If people in Sandy Shores want to fix the issues, rather than dedicating the amount of energy y'all currently are to being an unrealistic redneck militia, Utilize the structure that is in place, and file reports on the unrealistic robbers in Blaine County. 

 

I've also seen people repeatedly use the word "Entitled" when people talk about some of the failures of administration. I've donated money to this server. I've great respect for admins who do answer reports. That doesn't change the reality that the report section is currently neglected, and that neglect, only makes issues worse. Everyone dedicates their time to this server, and it's ridiculous that someone could be kept waiting for a month in the worst cases to get a ruling. The server cannot, and won't, improve unless people complain about and bring up issues. Considering the hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars GTAW rakes in on a monthly basis? I think we are entitled to a functioning server, and those who fight against "entitlement" are helping nobody.

Militancy doesn't mean DMing. It means being armed and self-aware. If a suspicious bike that you've never seen before rolls up? Be prepared to draw your weapon for a counter attack. After all, as a local, you'd be aware of who rides which vehicle 90% of the time. If there's a suspicious vehicle that you've never seen? Be on your toes. My character grips his waist, all the time, whenever paranoid... just like most armed people in real life.

Most people in the countryside are more pro-Libertarian than you can imagine, but vote for Conservatives. Just putting that out there.

EDIT: When did Blaine County only refer to Sandy Shores? Don't reduce the whole county to one town. You have people that live in farms, trap-houses, and trailers, as-well. Stab city, the trailers to the east, literal R.V.'s littered on dirt roads etc...

Edited December 30, 2020 by DLimit

[Ted]

28 minutes ago, AceS| said:

Also, if you’re going to roleplay a realistic, rural citizen, in AMERICA, you would have a gun and have the mentality TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT. Country boys are a different breed. Get a gun, that solves robberies. Country people defend themselves and the cops come up later to clean up. I have like a 20 minute - 40 minute response time where I’m from in the county irl, and my states small. And guess what we can’t make a forum post OOC IRL and complain about it. That doesn’t exist irl! We go get security cameras and a gun, as an American should.

 

 

Imagine LA. I role played  in the county/sandy for three years and ran the first county faction. I was never robbed once, and I was never caught lacking. If you are caught lacking you deserved it.

Your portrayal of rural Americans is unrealistic to the area in question, and quite frankly, offensive. There aren't "Country Boys" around the Salton Sea. To measure my country dick for a second: I've shot tanerite. I've bucked bails. I've gone mudding, hunting, and so forth. I live in a town of less than 5,000 people. Your portrayal of "the country" isn't monolithic, and the Salton Sea certainly isn't the country. "Trespassers will be shot" tends to apply to ranches and farms, not the front yard of a mobile home.

 

Let's also be clear, your faction was shut down because of serial inactivity. The reason you weren't "caught lacking" was because you weren't on to get caught.

Edited December 30, 2020 by Ted

[Wildcat]

As stated, police response time in rural areas is supposed to be high. It's part and parcel of living in the sticks - help is going to be a good distance away. That being said, I think it would be very unreasonable and unlearned to say that the LSSD neglects the Blaine County area. There's almost always at least one unit in the area and, if a 911 call comes in, a lot more rush in. The age old stereotype of the Sheriff's Department being mandated to do laps around Route 68, Joshua Road and the Senora Freeway is very dated. I'd challenge many people to do the same and see how long it takes before they pull up in a parking lot and watch Youtube videos. 

[Keane]

I skimmed over the thread and didn't read most of the replies so I apologize if I repeat any points that were made previously. The opinions shown here and my own and don't represent the opinions of the staff team.

To give some context, I've consistently patrolled around the county as an LSSD deputy for the past few months. People that RP in the county, Paleto and Sandy in particular, will be able to back me up on that. From regular civilians to members of illegal factions, a lot of characters know my character and other deputies on a first name basis. Why? Because there are members of the LSSD that are pretty dedicated to patrolling and roleplaying in the county. In fact, the illegal factions out there have got pretty good at avoiding unmarked patrols and detectives because they recognize them from being out there a lot. On an OOC level, that's not exactly a bad thing because those factions are actually providing good roleplay.

 

The county is covered better by the LSSD than most people think. Even during times where we have 5 or 6 units out there like the past two nights, it's still a huge area to cover. Prior to the holidays the county was covered pretty well too. The combination of a new illegal faction in the county and the LSSD being less active due to the holidays has resulted in a spike in crime. Someone brought that up IC and an IC decision was made to come up with a plan to deal with it.

 

The county is quiet the majority of the time. The illegal factions keep things discreet on purpose. They're not the ones rolling around on dirt bikes robbing everything with a nametag above its head. It's simply not feasible to ask a player in the community to drive around a desert for 4 hours a day to try to stumble across the one or two robberies that happen in that time period. I personally don't mind doing it because my character knows a lot of people from Sandy Shores and Paleto Bay. I can just park up anywhere and solve my boredom by interacting with people. It's not like that for everyone in SD though. A unit was created to give perks like unmarked cars to people who do want to actively patrol the county and that has been successful so far. The degree of success some people are requesting on this thread is impossible to achieve without straying away from the LSSD's goal as a faction. We're there to provide realistic, enjoyable RP experiences. Stooping down to the level of the RP seen from a lot of these robberies goes against what we expect from our faction members. 

 

On the small chance that a robbery suspect is found, it's usually someone sticking to the meta that has been established. Fully upgraded BF 400, black clothing, helmet, gloves, mask. If you spot one, it either wheelies on the highway so it can reach 140 MPH or zooms up a hill where you can't follow. Air units have been used to try to counter this but we've had air units struggle to find the bikes even with a 30 second response time. Due to sync, it's difficult to find motorcycles from the air. This is especially true at night and in the desert. Sports cars and high end SUVs are also common. These vehicles are picked intentionally because they can outrun cops on the ground.

Response times are longer too. There's been many situations where I've been patrolling in Paleto Bay and had to respond to Sandy Shores. Driving on either highway around Chiliad takes a few minutes. With such a massive area, this is always going to be the case. In the city, you can drive in a straight line to get to where you want. The response time in the city only takes more than two minutes if you're in Morningwood and the call is at the docks where the trucker job is. In the county, you have to really know which roads to take to get somewhere faster. Unless you're nearby, you'll only arrive on scene three to four minutes after the call is made. 

The majority of robberies that I have seen have been trash tier RP. There's been several attempts to rob gun stores. Most of those have either resulted in the robbers being chased away or admin punishments being issued. Someone legitimately tried to rob a gun store with a bat despite seeing three employees with guns and two other people inside. Both of those people were also armed so you can tell how that robbery attempt went. The player ended up getting banned due to having a poor admin record.

The issue is players who are desperate for guns robbing people in the county because they're more likely to have guns. If people are willing to use bats to take on armed people for guns, it tells you the mentality of the people committing these robberies. Tackling it IC doesn't work. The LSSD has had at least five units covering the county during peak time for the past two days. There's been units covering the county before that too but I can't give exact numbers due to not being around myself. SD being present for the past two nights has resulted in no violent crime happening when SD is around. The night before last, three separate robbery crews were seen and decided to head back to the city after noticing unmarked units following them. Last night, these people didn't show up again. They wait for the people covering the county to log off. Just like other RP servers, the early morning hours can be crazy due to the lack of admin and police coverage. It's not something that can be solved IC.

This particular issue has strayed into the territory of being an RP quality issue. The IC solution to the OOC problem doesn't work. With the RP Quality Team being closed recently, you have to rely on making regular reports to address it. Unfortunately most of the players that cause these problems take advantage of times when there's less admins and cops on so they've been getting away with a lot.  When admins do respond, at least in my experience, punishments have been handed out. It's a big ask to get an admin to watch someone for a half hour when there's a lot of pending reports though. The best advice I can give is to record the robberies and report them. It's pretty easy to catch these people out for chain robberies if each report is documented.

 

 

 

Edited December 30, 2020 by Keane

[ThatDutchPerson]

1 hour ago, Ted said:

This is an incredibly good point. Frankly everyone here arguing for militancy and arming further have these robbers watering at the mouth. Much of what people seem to advocate for is making Sandy Shores into a some sort of Sundown County, or just generally more militant. This just isn't realistic to the area. People have literally suggested sitting out on their porch with a shotgun. People seem to think that Sandy Shores is some bumfuck hillbilly town. I live in a bumfuck rural town with four-thousand people in it. Nobody is sitting on their porch with a shotgun. People seem to be advocating for dming these robbers, which isn't the solution, and frankly, will only make the admin's jobs more difficult. Militant-esc RP in Sandy Shores is not realistic, not is it good roleplay, nor will it fix the situation. It's an excuse for people in Sandy to DM. I understand "people are reacting IC!" and that is the issue. Bad RP begets more Bad RP, that doesn't make bad RP okay. If people in Sandy Shores want to fix the issues, rather than dedicating the amount of energy y'all currently are to being an unrealistic redneck militia, Utilize the structure that is in place, and file reports on the unrealistic robbers in Blaine County. 

 

I've also seen people repeatedly use the word "Entitled" when people talk about some of the failures of administration. I've donated money to this server. I've great respect for admins who do answer reports. That doesn't change the reality that the report section is currently neglected, and that neglect, only makes issues worse. Everyone dedicates their time to this server, and it's ridiculous that someone could be kept waiting for a month in the worst cases to get a ruling. The server cannot, and won't, improve unless people complain about and bring up issues. Considering the hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars GTAW rakes in on a monthly basis? I think we are entitled to a functioning server, and those who fight against "entitlement" are helping nobody.

Preach, give this player a medal.

[Ted]

9 minutes ago, Keane said:

This particular issue has strayed into the territory of being an RP quality issue. The IC solution to the OOC problem doesn't work. With the RP Quality Team being closed recently, you have to rely on making regular reports to address it. Unfortunately most of the players that cause these problems take advantage of times when there's less admins and cops on so they've been getting away with a lot.  When admins do respond, at least in my experience, punishments have been handed out. It's a big ask to get an admin to watch someone for a half hour when there's a lot of pending reports though. The best advice I can give is to record the robberies and report them. It's pretty easy to catch these people out for chain robberies if each report is documented.

[eTaylor]

1 hour ago, Keane said:

The best advice I can give is to record the robberies and report them.

People feel that reporting players doesn’t work though, and that because of that they are less inclined to report in the first place. 

[Smilesville]

16 minutes ago, eTaylor said:

People feel that reporting players doesn’t work though, and that because of that they are less inclined to report in the first place. 

This. If I reported every bad robbery I witnessed, I'd be on the forums more than I'm in-game. Still, there's merit to the idea that staff can't be expected to watch everyone at all times.

 

What we really need is a realignment of incentives to make robbery a much less attractive option - be that through CK's for robbers who die during the attempts, in-game hour limits before a character can begin a robbery, or something else entirely.

 

Frankly, I believe if we got rid of the outdated notion that "fear RP means you surrender," we'd get somewhere. That, or don't accept "they ran away" as a valid reason to gun someone down.

Edited December 30, 2020 by Smilesville

[eTaylor]

6 minutes ago, Smilesville said:

This. If I reported every bad robbery I witnessed, I'd be on the forums more than I'm in-game. Still, there's merit to the idea that staff can't be expected to watch everyone at all times.

 

What we really need is a realignment of incentives to make robbery a much less attractive option - be that through CK's for robbers who die during the attempts, in-game hour limits before a character can begin a robbery, or something else entirely.

 

Frankly, I believe if we got rid of the outdated notion that "fear RP means you surrender," we'd get somewhere. That, or don't accept "they ran away" as a valid reason to gun someone down.

Guess it’s just full circle; 

 

[knppel]

16 minutes ago, Smilesville said:

Frankly, I believe if we got rid of the outdated notion that "fear RP means you surrender," we'd get somewhere. That, or don't accept "they ran away" as a valid reason to gun someone down.

This is a total misconception to begin with and heavily meta-gamish (and nonetheless applied all too often also in staff verdicts).

Typical robbers don't even expect surrender, much rather as victim you are expected to anticipate their intentions as all too often they don't verbalize them even (i.e. "hands up, this is a robbery, gimme all your money drugs and guns"), but much rather resort to one-sided -and often powergamed- action-rpg (i.e."/me pats down XY's pockets").

 

This leads to the completely absurd situation that usually when acting afraid in character, you'll instead be accused of stalling or otherwise "non rp", as specially in robberies the actual goal is not intimidation (i.e. , inducing fear in a victim*), but solely to create a situation where ideally the victim won't fight back, but surrender their guns and money.

I get the criminal lobby will scream up or cringe at this, but imho the question should first be wether a criminal was actually scary to begin with- then one could determine on a case by case base wether someone actually failed to roleplay accordingly and acts like Superman, or if maybe the robbers just were total douches that couldn't scare a grandma in a wheelchair.

 

*This, on a further meta-level, makes this even more tricky. Many robbers, due to lack of effort in this area, are not scary to begin with. The players behind them will often regardless demand others to "rp fear", lawyering to admins they put this and that effort into ensuring a victim has no means to fight back etc.

Typically this even includes own character background to explain why this character is so scary ("I'm a badass gangster").

It expects others to metagame this gangster-ness. Very scary.

 

Edited December 30, 2020 by knppel