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Official rule on /showitems


Cypher

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2 hours ago, Visceral said:

 Have you encountered or heard of many polite robbers in your time on this earth?

I encountered them lots of times, they only briefly showed their guns and knifes. As I remained calm, they were quite polite towards me at the point than they didn't even touched or acted aggresive towards me.

Edited by Xaleya
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3 hours ago, Smilesville said:

I'll walk you through it step by step.

  1. The rule says it can only be used OOC.
     
  2. Someone uses the information IC.
     
  3. How do you prove they used the OOC information IC?

State of mind is very difficult to prove.

 

That is why I do not recall is a favorite line of those on a witness stand. If he says, "no, I didn't shoot him" and evidence later suggests that he did, he's lying on the stand. If he says "I do not recall," the act of proving that he did indeed recall the events is monumentally more difficult.

 

Fast forward to the usage of /showitems after all the items have been handed over. Which of the following is better for the server?

  1. A robber misses the SNS pistol an individual has in a concealed location.
  2. The robber makes his escape and holsters his own weapon to get on his motorcycle/bicycle, making him a reasonable target for retaliation.
  3. (Optional) The victim produces his weapon and gains the upper hand.

Contrast that with what would follow if the rules were changed.

  1. A robber misses the SNS pistol an individual has in a concealed location.
  2. The victim uses /showitems and indicates that he still had a pistol concealed on his person.
  3. (Optional) The robber goes into /b to argue with the victim and demands to know where the SNS was.
  4. The robber restrains the victim to a fixture with cable ties for fear of retaliation from the SNS.
  5. The victim files a report, claiming metagaming has taken place.
  6. The robber claims restraining the victim with cable ties post-robbery was always the plan.

After the second scenario, without knowledge of how the first would have played out, how do you propose an administrator determine whether or not metagaming took place without disenfranchising either party?

 

  • To presume the robber metagamed because they restrained their victim could be unfair to the robber.
  • To presume the robber did not metagame simply because you cannot discern intent could be unfair to the victim.

No matter how the staff member rules, there is no scenario in which you come out with a fair outcome for both parties.

 

The rule would be unique in that it could be taken advantage of intentionally with no way to discern whether or not you had actually done so. As the robbery meta evolves, it will be common practice to ziptie victims to things in the event they might have a gun that passes a search, further muddying the waters as to the frame of mind of an individual before /showitems happened.

 

You could only eliminate this issue by removing the range restrictions on /showitems; I'm much less (but still somewhat) opposed to that. While it would take deliberate contrivance, you could still conceivably metagame the information you obtain from the command - for example, if party A has robbed someone and notes to party B that a particular individual has a firearm (blatantly metagaming) and party B robs the same victim without any reference to party A seeking that item, how would you propose a staff member track that down?

 

No, if I have to choose between giving robbers the potential for unfalsifiable metagaming alibis versus a victim fibbing and requiring staff to check on their inventory to see if they've held something back, I'd much prefer the second.

 

I guarantee you if this is comes to be, victims will have all the more reason to report every single robbery that takes place - whether for poor RP, metagaming, logging early, or a combination of all these.


You keep bringing up zipties, I don't think I've ever been involved or seen a single robbery where the robber uses zipties. A new rule isn't going to suddenly put this ziptie idea in a robbers head. Not to mention, just because an SNS pistol is a small handgun, doesn't mean someone can conceal that enough for it to remain hidden throughout an entire search. (DONT WORRY, I TOO DON'T THINK /me runs NAME's pockets IS SUFFICIENT RP) Any number of factors can play into it, but it doesn't take much to find any weapon on a person, no matter the size.

 

You can give me fat paragraphs about extra-specific scenarios all you want, you're still ignoring that this rule would come with the condition that your interaction with the victim is over once you /showitems, if the robber tries to carry on after the fact then that is already enough substance to warrant a punishment/warning. All this extra ziptie nonsense will be subject to scrutiny regardless.

 

Perhaps the one thing you've said that resonates with me, "State of mind is very difficult to prove." Yes, it is. As such, Metagaming has always been one of the most difficult rules to prove; meta is in the name. That doesn't mean it's not a rule, does it?

 

Robberies aren't a victimless crime. Roleplay should give all parties a fair chance when they can, but when the odds are against you, i.e. you are being robbed by 2-3 people, you have less power. Rules shouldn't force a fair situation if that situation isn't supposed to be fair.

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1 hour ago, EffPee said:

Not to mention, just because an SNS pistol is a small handgun, doesn't mean someone can conceal that enough for it to remain hidden throughout an entire search. (DONT WORRY, I TOO DON'T THINK /me runs NAME's pockets IS SUFFICIENT RP) Any number of factors can play into it, but it doesn't take much to find any weapon on a person, no matter the size.

The scenarios I'm envisioning are much less "it's actually hidden inside a cavity I carved into my fake leg" and more like "the robber was moving too quickly and missed patting down under his arms." It's easy to overlook details in the heat of a tense encounter.

 

Still, I've personally been carrying my weapon with me in real life wherever I go for 10+ years now, and I've brought it through patdowns before. Mind you, it's a single stack Walther PPS slimmer than most pistols you'll encounter, but a pat-down isn't as easy or quick as it's made out to be by any stretch of the imagination. I've actually had to turn around once I was inside a government building because I'd passed through a pat-down and only when I saw the "no firearms allowed" sign did I remember I had it with me. 😂

 

1 hour ago, EffPee said:

You can give me fat paragraphs about extra-specific scenarios all you want, you're still ignoring that this rule would come with the condition that your interaction with the victim is over once you /showitems, if the robber tries to carry on after the fact then that is already enough substance to warrant a punishment/warning. All this extra ziptie nonsense will be subject to scrutiny regardless.

Cars blocking your vehicle in wasn't a thing until a particular report came around in which someone got away with it - these sorts of things follow a pattern. Many reports have more views than most other sections of the forums, barring update threads, so they get plenty of exposure as we use them to determine what is (and isn't) permissible - people definitely pay attention, and the meta game (not to be confused with metagame) shifts as people adapt to the most efficient method that is within the rules.

 

It's why we see dozens of casinos and bars with nothing but a bartender, truckers flying down backroads at 100+ mph in Pounders on their way to Route 68, and robbers doubling up on the BF400 or blocking people into driveways with SUV's.

 

1 hour ago, EffPee said:

Perhaps the one thing you've said that resonates with me, "State of mind is very difficult to prove." Yes, it is. As such, Metagaming has always been one of the most difficult rules to prove; meta is in the name. That doesn't mean it's not a rule, does it?

Of course it's a rule, but I'm as much against punishing people without enough evidence as I am bad robberies. If someone's doing something poorly, you'd best be able to prove it before you punish them - but you can't prove what someone would've done. With a rule addition like this, you can only speculate - and my fear is that someone might be happy to punish first and ask questions later.

 

With most metagaming, there are usually indicators you can dig up - PM's from one person to another, or alternatively, a distinct lack of communication when five of a character's pals conveniently show up to a gunfight. This rule would be unique in that metagaming with the information provided through it would be utterly undetectable, and that's only accounting for deliberate metagaming.

 

It's overconfident pride talking if a player believes he can dissociate to the point where nothing he observes OOC will impact his or her decision making, ever, at any point in time - and so I firmly believe the responsible player should avoid extraneous OOC information. It's one reason I haven't looked at a single faction thread (I personally think they're not the greatest trend, but that's neither here nor there.)

 

Using /showitems at range would help, but like I said, bad actors have way too much latitude to abuse the privilege.


How do we mitigate that risk while keeping the purported benefits of the rule? I don't support the suggestion because I don't have an answer to that without something extremely contrived like "invoking this rule starts a 72 hour prohibition on the robber who asks for /showitems after the robbery has concluded and 30 minutes have elapsed." As effective as that might be (or maybe not, who knows) I don't think we'd want something like that.

 

1 hour ago, EffPee said:

Robberies aren't a victimless crime. Roleplay should give all parties a fair chance when they can, but when the odds are against you, i.e. you are being robbed by 2-3 people, you have less power. Rules shouldn't force a fair situation if that situation isn't supposed to be fair.

I'm very firmly in the camp that even if something isn't fun IC, it should be as much fun as possible OOC. That's why I essentially want jails to be a "server inside a server" in terms of fun so the prospect of a realistic sentence for a crime doesn't cause the player to lose their drive to play.

 

I hit a large brick wall when it comes to robberies on that front, however. It's demoralizing that every single robber I've encountered over my years playing here had no desire to craft a narrative and preferred instead to take their script items and run. I'm sure they exist, somewhere, but it's difficult to reconcile that with not having personally encountered a single one. Even when they were reported for their poor play, they made a last ditch effort to cut a deal with me to take the report down in return for all the items back - it was a very calculated and deliberately poor style of play in service to a goal. It's either a grind or a power fantasy for so many people - but that's neither here nor there, with regards to the rule.

 

All of which is to say that if we can find some stipulation to the rule to outweigh any potential metagaming benefits, that would be much more palatable than what's repeatedly proposed.

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11 minutes ago, Smilesville said:

I hit a large brick wall when it comes to robberies on that front, however. It's demoralizing that every single robber I've encountered over my years playing here had no desire to craft a narrative and preferred instead to take their script items and run. I'm sure they exist, somewhere, but it's difficult to reconcile that with not having personally encountered a single one.

You admit that you don't look at faction threads. You don't role play in crime focused factions. You have no understanding of the deeper levels of illegal RP. How can you make bold claims about players not having any desire to craft narratives? You don't have the credentials to make such a claim.

 

Robberies aren't committed to build connections with the victims. It's not speed dating, it's a robbery. It's rare that you'd rob someone you have a connection with because then the robbery can trace back to you unless you're after a specific item that you have knowledge of. Understand why you've never had a narrative built around a robbery on you? Because you don't role play with illegal RPers. You refuse to and generalise their mindsets.

 

Illegal RP has it's issues. Some players aren't incredible at role playing detailed robberies. We want the standards to improve. We believe the standards will improve if the focus of a robbery is on the role play and the /showitems is an after thought once someone has been searched. You fear meta-game after the fact? That's on you. No rule set is perfect but as EffPee stated, it's the rule set that would come with the fewest margins of error. You've ignored every attempt he's made at explaining this to you and I'm surprised he's given you the time of day with his responses. 

    The risk of someone power-gaming that their items aren't detectable.

    The risk of someone breaking common courtesy to force /showitems at an inappropriate time.

    The risk of someone breaking common courtesy by stalling robbery role play because they dislike the search attempt.

    The risk of someone being unrealistic with the way they search you so that you have to, in the moment, /showitems.

 

When this rule implementation is put forward;

    Power-gaming items that aren't detectable can be taken to a player report with evidence.

    Role play won't be interrupted by needless /b remarks about /showitems.

    Players won't have to wait 30 minutes for an /re to get a response because either the robber or the victim is stalling.

    No one will RP searching in strange spots on a person because they aren't trying to trigger a /showitems from the victim.

 

I'd say all those problems being solved is worth the slight chance that someone might feel the need to meta-game once they've already completed their search. A majority of good RPers won't.

28 minutes ago, Smilesville said:

It's overconfident pride talking if a player believes he can dissociate to the point where nothing he observes OOC will impact his or her decision making, ever,

It will put the following question in player's minds: "why didn't they RP having X items on them"

But that can then be forwarded in a player report. The only scenario they might let that scenario have an affect on their RP is if you didn't give up a gun. Sure, you somehow smuggled a firearm into a government building where they pat you down after you likely walked through metal detectors. Unlikely story but we'll buy it. If the criminal doesn't RP being lazy at searching you because it's the only search they plan on doing for the day, how are they not going to find a weapon on you? A ridiculous story to make a ridiculous argument.

 

 

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