Escalation in GTA:W.

[Smilesville]

7 hours ago, nateX said:

People escalate situations way too quick. I've had to punish multiple people for that, the most prominent one would probably be someone gunning another player down inside an open 24/7 for insulting their character 3 times. I've also witnessed this IC, most recently being yesterday when my character was making fun of people at the riots. A guy in skinny jeans and a motorcycle helmet decided to be the hero and punch my character for making fun of his outfit, then spun around me, doing burnouts until he managed to run my character over and drive away. 

Yeah, the punch seems fine, but you wouldn't run someone over for making fun of your outfit.

 

I wonder if the rapid, repeated escalation isn't a response to the desync that melee combat brings about in some cases. The G6 video was a pretty good example of a decent sized crowd of people running around attempting to hit each other until someone declares "fuck it" and pulls out a gun.

 

There's also the general lack of legal consequence even if you are caught doing something genuinely terrible. Even if they throw the book at you and convict you of aggravated battery and assault with a deadly weapon, you're still back out with the general populace in... three and a half, four days tops?

 

“And here we must observe that men must either be flattered or crushed; for they will revenge themselves for slight wrongs, whilst for grave ones they cannot. The injury therefore that you do to a man should be such that you need not fear his revenge.”

[waterwings]

11 hours ago, ThomasNoman said:

Honestly, you should be happy as it is here, lol. I've been in voice Rage:MP servers and gangs with 10 sport cars would follow a police car to provoke them and start a shootout for that.

Other servers aren't and shouldn't be used as an argument to sweet-talk bad behavior on this server.

 

On-topic, I do indeed believe that some people tend to over-escalate real quick. I've seen this in every echelon of the server, legal RPers, criminal RPers, government RPers, cops and more. The number of times that:

Spoiler

someone who'd been pulled over turns to start a shootout with the cops pulling him over and ends up PKed/CKed, the number of times that a cop decided to walk into Rancho on his own or pulling assault rifles on hoodlums during foot pursuits. Hoodlums flashing their middle finger at police cars unprovoked, actively following you just to give you the finger. Just because you're driving down a main street. Legal RPers pulling out a gun to threaten someone with while there are several means of de-escalation that they could have tried. Criminal RPers bringing guns to fist fights. I can keep giving examples.

 

I believe that there is a lot of room in improvement of escalation and de-escalation RP both on an OOC level and an IC level.

Though it feels like the reason for this topic is more like a situation suited for a player report or an RP quality report, I agree with the content of it.

Escalation should become more of a thing both under players and admins their attention.

 

[GHawkins]

I recently read a book that touched on the escalation of conflict. It's interesting to see how the people in game mimic real life in the steps and behaviour, except in a very much condensed fashion. And at the end, you can see where GTAW goes off script, which results in a rate of escalation that simply does not happen in real life.

 

Rory Miller calls it the "Monkey Dance", or MD. Humans are not unlike animals in that regard; Just like how monkeys fight, deer lock antlers and snakes coil around each other, humans fight each other over status and territory. It's apparently genetically written into us to try and impress those around us by rising to the challenge giving by someone trying to impress those around them.

 

In real life, the Monkey Dance has a couple of steps;

1. Non verbal challenge like a stare.

2. Verbal challenge.

3. Approach to signal intend / willingness to fight.

4. Squaring off which may involve physical contact such as pushing or may simple be more verbal exchanges.

5. Fight.

 

When in game, you can see players follow these steps instinctively without realising it, usually in rapid speed. Which isn't uncommon in real life, however the difference between game and real life comes from the willingness of people to call it quits.

 

Whereas in real life some people are inclined to back out of the MD at any point before step 5 while trying to save face, in game this rarely happens. People instinctively try to save their character's face by not backing out. Thus whereas in real life many MDs end with either party backing out, in game the majority of them reach step 5 and burst into a fight.

 

And that's where GTAW further disconnects from real life; MDs in real life usually are non-life threatening violence. The use of violence is to submit the other person and gain status. In GTAW, loss of face appears to be unacceptable for many people which results in a further escalation of violence with either knives or firearms. And if loss of face happens and someone gets knocked out or beaten, it's usually avenged with an escalation of violence at a later date.

 

There's no incentive to back out of MDs in game. You don't feel your character's dislocated jaw because he engaged in an MD with someone in a club, or the concussion, or whatnot. Nor do you feel the stab wound your character got because you decided to escalate it even further. There's no reason for many people in game to not engage the other person, while there's a lot of perceived reasons not to lose conflict with another person.

 

And because of that, I think it'd be very hard to root out the rapid, unrealistic escalation problem that plague many hostile interactions.

Edited January 27, 2021 by GHawkins
Grammar

[Vincent]

Plenty of good posts, and a lot of good discussion going on, but I still personally believe that there has to be a way to bring the community to a somewhat generalized understanding on the matter. I don't know how achievable that could be without something like say, a rule in place, however, seeing as people are warned and can get in trouble for escalation, I say we're still stepping in the right direction.

 

I was recently scrolling through the reports section, and if everyone here goes there to check it out, a majority of those reports are preventable shitpost situations full of escalation over stupid things ninety nine percent of the time.

 

 I personally believe that LESS ESCALATION = LESS REPORTS, which in turn equals MORE ROLEPLAY.

Edited January 28, 2021 by Vincent

[Liv]

I've seen a lot of poor escalation coming from a lot of PF holders these past few months, it seems if you're in a club and losing a verbal argument many peoples first instinct is to draw a weapon at the first sign of a threat. Drawing your weapon on someone who spits on the floor in front of you (This has ACTUALLY happened) or says they're gonna "Rock your jaw" just seems a bit much and honestly ruins the roleplay that could've been had.

 

There's a lot of play to win mentality that goes unchecked and this is before we even get into the subject of beefs between gangs/factions that are more than willing to shoot a group of teenagers over a few harsh words. I also believe that the desync has a lot to do with jumping to the gun, nobody wants to deal with the desync of script fighting on top of that a lot of people believe if they lose a street fight they basically lose everything on their characters and they're not willing to risk losing these assets so many just resort to homicide like it's nothing.

[Smilesville]

12 minutes ago, Liv said:

I've seen a lot of poor escalation coming from a lot of PF holders these past few months, it seems if you're in a club and losing a verbal argument many peoples first instinct is to draw a weapon at the first sign of a threat. Drawing your weapon on someone who spits on the floor in front of you (This has ACTUALLY happened) or says they're gonna "Rock your jaw" just seems a bit much and honestly ruins the roleplay that could've been had.

Quote

605. Brandishing a Firearm (F)

Any person(s) who is pointing, holding or brandishing a firearm, air or gas-operated weapon or object similar. It doesn't matter whether the firearm or object is capable of being fired; any person using the firearm or object in such manner as to reasonably induce fear in the mind of another, or inducing fear in the mind of others of being shot or injured.

Shall be liable under a Class B (3) or Class C (2) offense only, and shall receive a minimum of 1 Day. 

Quote

SECTION 202
§ 202. PERSONAL FIREARMS LICENSING — (a) The State of San Andreas declares that the following requirements for obtaining a Personal Firearm License must be observed, as the baseline for which additional regulations and requirements may be codified by municipal statue. These requirements on a state level are as follows;

• Licensee must be at least eighteen years of age if intending to purchase a rifle or shotgun, or twenty-one years of age if intending to purchase a handgun.
   
• Licensee must be a lawful resident of an established municipality or county in the State of San Andreas.
   
• Licensee must not have been convicted of a felony in the State of San Andreas, or the United States of America.

I can't say I've had the same experience as you by a long shot, but considering you can't just PK out of charges like these to avoid losing your PF license, that's a pretty effective remedy against the sort of behavior you're mentioning. It's obviously just poor portrayal that can be dealt with in reports as well, if the situation evolves in such a way that legal prosecution doesn't happen.

[Liv]

3 minutes ago, Smilesville said:

I can't say I've had the same experience as you by a long shot, but considering you can't just PK out of charges like these to avoid losing your PF license, that's a pretty effective remedy against the sort of behavior you're mentioning. It's obviously just poor portrayal that can be dealt with in reports as well, if the situation evolves in such a way that legal prosecution doesn't happen.

Yeah, it is. The spitting on the floor thing actually happened in a business and the owner roleplayed it as there being no camera's. The cops were called and the caller was arrested for misuse of 911 and the person who brandished got away completely free of any charges.

[Garras Up]

The amount of times ive been shot at for tryna run a fade is fucked, honestly. I know we're rping the city being similar to LA but even cunts in LA are more willing to fight than they are in LS. 😅

[Slappy]

I think better roleplay is created which creates less escalation for Illegal factions when brawls and beat downs happen. Let's imagine there are two factions, one faction beats down a member of the other faction. In response the faction where the member was beaten up responds by going to the first factions hang outs and beating up there members. This creates a involving story and narrative for everyone involved. No one is PKed or CKed. The problem is everyone wants to be the hero/main character on a server with regularly over 600 players on. When you get a faction which is constantly shot at and killed it does not allow growth within that faction or them the ability to potential bring something fresh to illegal roleplay which some people constantly complain nothing new is added. It can become a toxic and stagnant minefield if one faction constantly shuts down other factions for the sake of keeping on top because of play to win mindsets.

Edited January 29, 2021 by Slappy

[BigSmileLing]

On GTAW everyone is John Wick, a murderer without scruples or feelings, he is not affected by anything psychically and he doesn't care to kill a fly or a person, the limitation of investigations by the PD is also another factor, on GTAW everyone steals, murders without gloves, recorded by 30 cameras, but they don't go to jail because these investigations aren't possible, the result is that everyone does what they want and they kill everything that moves.

 

For that reason the escalation is what it is, people only think about killing, people think that this is GTAO and the development of the character or the psychic consequences and consequences such as going to jail sweat their balls.

 

PS: GTAW is not based on GTAO or 1898, it's based on 2021.

Edited January 29, 2021 by BigSmileLing