Communities instead of factions

[slick!]

On 4/28/2021 at 5:17 PM, mj2002 said:

I don't think there's anything stopping you from doing this at this moment, right? You can make an unofficial group thread, and/or a Discord server, etc. What more would be needed?

As the main proprietor for the New Chinatown area, my big looming threat is my illegal faction's eventual demise.

What happens when activity dies, all of our business dies out, etcetera? In the case of New Chinatown, which is in the Mission Row/Textile City area, I believe those neighborhoods would slowly become something else again, while an area like Little Seoul remains static due to it's nature of being a scripted place in GTA V. I believe, as a leader threatened by the fact that my hard work may be in vain for the creation of new hotspots, that the grandfathering of areas through IC action needs to be put in place OOC, as well, to solidify these places as ethnic areas for future factions to base themselves out of.

 

This currently has been done (in my personal experience):
- The creation of a head canon of the area (slightly altering history to fit the story of the recreation of LS' Chinatown)

- The creation of notable areas (Such as the Lotus Garden Projects Complex, and others to come)
- The establishment of a solid player base through other projects (An illegal faction, for this instance)

This is all fine and dandy for short term development, but for long term development, it's incredibly detrimental to the creativity of the few players who are actually trying to create a long-lasting environment on the server.

The issues I've ran into as a community creator:
- The incredibly long wait times of LFM, IFM, and PM.

(a) LFM
- The process of gaining legal funding for larger enterprises to help support the creation of communities like mine is an arduous process which reaps very little reward, definitely not enough to sustain an active player base of 30+ people.
- Aside from going to LFM directly for funding, the GOV process is relatively uninviting, and has taken me months to get into as a psuedo-legal RPer due to me not knowing anyone from this scene of roleplay, and no real way to reach out to them because a lack of resources to understand how it may work on GTAW.

- A lack of support for neighborhoods as a concept, no real way to put notable features or make it lively outside of businesses, hangout spots or the incumbent illegal faction. 
(b) IFM

- This may be a freak case, but again with funding, on the illegal side, is a relatively unwelcoming thing to handle, seeing as there's not many resources and it's a word of mouth thing to be introduced to.

- Generally, these neighborhoods revolve around the illegal community, so a lot of the brunt that LFM faces, IFM also faces as these factions follow the guidelines of both as both legal and illegal entities.
(c) PM

- I can't really comment on wait times on Property Management, that's something that plagues everyone and is understandable for them.

- My desire with PM is to work in junction with LFM, IFM and other faction subteams for the keepsafe of properties made by my neighborhood to keep them the way they are, so our hard work doesn't go to waste when the eventual change of power occurs from one faction to another. I want them to be used, but I want them to be used properly.

My desires:
- The officiation of how a group of players can make a neighborhood, and can be supported by all subteams of staff either financially, script-wise, or just through promotion.

- More of a limelight on these projects, as they're a lot to organize, and the promotion of them allows the fruits of labor to come our way.

[mj2002]

@slick!, this is an interesting post you made. A few good points are brought up and I personally have a clearer idea of what it is you're trying to achieve. Some things to address that you mention regarding LFM;

 

• For the funding process, we have the same trouble you're facing with GOV. Most of LFM is mostly involved with legal roleplay and like yourself, are not too familiar with the community you're running. Therefor it is difficult to find out more about your concept and what you're doing with the funding that we'd be awarding. After all, it is closely tied to an illegal faction, so we have to be careful with who we give funds to. If there's a way in which we can make this process less arduous, let me know. We're always open to suggestions and feedback.
• The wait times are always a problem, I'll grant you that immediately. Part of the reason is that we try to get feedback from multiple administrators in order to ensure that we're not overlooking some red flags. This by itself makes the process lengthier. A specific request that's tied to an illegal faction might mean that LFM asks for further feedback from IFM, if there are any additional issues to keep in mind. The waiting time isn't entirely problematic though. It is annoying when you're waiting for it, and we try not to stretch this out further than necessary, but it helps to weed out requests from players that aren't fully or well enough committed to a project.
• As to the support that we can give to neighborhoods as a concept, please tell us what you're looking for? What sort of support can we provide you here? What sort of notable features would help you more easily facilitate neighborhood roleplay?

 

Further cooperation between IFM, LFM and PM for the sake of keeping properties relevant to a neighborhood sounds nice in theory, but the flip side is that we also don't want to unnecessarily constrain players to predetermined concepts. We want to avoid micromanaging players on what they can do with their neighborhoods, properties and areas. This is also where the leadership of the subcommunity itself comes in to encourage cooperation between players, factions, businesses and other groups in a single area, instead of administrators telling people what they can and can't do.

 

I agree that there deserves to be more attention to this concept, so please let us know how we can help.

[KinnyWynny]

The above two posts kind of hit upon an issue of the server, which for me has always been the blanket separation of legal and illegal roleplay. In order to make the highest quality of either, they should’ve been interconnected from the start.

 

From an IC standpoint, having GOV give money to local communities should be perfectly normal operation, following that, having this money eventually funnel into the corrupt world of fronts for a TRIAD should be a consequence of the corruption of Los Santos life.

 

Having GOV be worried from an OOC point about being perfectly clean and incorruptible pretty much just kills whatever roleplay interest you can get out of GOV. Whats the point if the height of city management roleplay is just good bureaucracy? Where’s the roleplay in that?

 

 

To another point, having illegal factions spout of relatively legal communities is not only a great idea, but it extends the life of certain neighborhoods far beyond the life span of a single faction. I.e rancho, little seoul and forum drive.

 

I’d love for a general re-alignment of both sides to just realize, having both be interconnected makes both systems better. The world is grey, roleplay should be grey. Corruption is normal in government work, and that aspect of roleplay should be explored. 
 

Ultimately, I just hate the black and white nature of legal/illegal roleplay on this server, it’s incredibly limiting creatively. And while yes I get its to stop really stupid usages of government power, there are great systems you can use to regulate said corruption.

[Lurleen]

20 minutes ago, KinnyWynny said:

The above two posts kind of hit upon an issue of the server, which for me has always been the blanket separation of legal and illegal roleplay. In order to make the highest quality of either, they should’ve been interconnected from the start.

 

From an IC standpoint, having GOV give money to local communities should be perfectly normal operation, following that, having this money eventually funnel into the corrupt world of fronts for a TRIAD should be a consequence of the corruption of Los Santos life.

 

Having GOV be worried from an OOC point about being perfectly clean and incorruptible pretty much just kills whatever roleplay interest you can get out of GOV. Whats the point if the height of city management roleplay is just good bureaucracy? Where’s the roleplay in that?

 

 

To another point, having illegal factions spout of relatively legal communities is not only a great idea, but it extends the life of certain neighborhoods far beyond the life span of a single faction. I.e rancho, little seoul and forum drive.

 

I’d love for a general re-alignment of both sides to just realize, having both be interconnected makes both systems better. The world is grey, roleplay should be grey. Corruption is normal in government work, and that aspect of roleplay should be explored. 
 

Ultimately, I just hate the black and white nature of legal/illegal roleplay on this server, it’s incredibly limiting creatively. And while yes I get its to stop really stupid usages of government power, there are great systems you can use to regulate said corruption.

I agree with that, GTA world separates roleplay into legal and illegal factions, the most clear example is having LFM, IFM and PM. I think illegal roleplayers should do daily life things more often, and legal rp should interact more with the rest of the server instead of just gathering at clubs or bars with ooc friends.

 

If communities were the official thing, each of them would have a couple of admins overseeing them. Plus each part of the map will have its own lore, shown on the forums, helping new players or characters to decide where to RP.

Edited April 30, 2021 by Lurleen

[Sinatra]

naw b

[Trupiano]

As some of the previous replies have mentioned, there seems to be this black and white treatment when it comes to giving criminals tools to build communities, especially funding. It sucks because most of the servers major project are all undertaken by Illegal RPers. The Rockford Hill's Dome, The Rockford Country Club, Pacific Bluffs, the docks, as well as community hubs like Vespucci, Little Seoul and New Chinatown are all project which wouldn't exist without the backing of some of the largest factions on the server. I think people get the wrong impression that we take up these projects because we want power and control, but honestly? We only undertake them because we have the man power to bring it to fruition and it's RP we wanted to see. 

 

8 hours ago, mj2002 said:

Further cooperation between IFM, LFM and PM for the sake of keeping properties relevant to a neighborhood sounds nice in theory, but the flip side is that we also don't want to unnecessarily constrain players to predetermined concepts. We want to avoid micromanaging players on what they can do with their neighborhoods, properties and areas. This is also where the leadership of the subcommunity itself comes in to encourage cooperation between players, factions, businesses and other groups in a single area, instead of administrators telling people what they can and can't do.

While I understand and appreciate the hands off approach, we've reached a threshold where it does more harm then good. @slick!'s faction and mine butt heads a lot over "New Chinatown". The area was for a long time a Slavic stronghold before EOC reformed and moved north into Vinewood. During the gap in time where Textile City was used by no one, multiple faction attempted to settle there. Now personally I don't think any of these faction are in the wrong. Slick and his faction saw a part of the area was not being used, moved in and started creating their own RP. We saw a part of the area was not being used and also moved in and started creating our own RP.

 

That's where the hands off approach becomes an issue.

 

You can't have two conflicting truths on the server. They RP that the entire area is New Chinatown and we only RP their small strip, neither of us are wrong but neither of us are right because we've both developed our own truths through our own RP. That's where staff needs to intervene. I would love for each community or area to have a combined leadership panel of all the factions that like you said encourages cooperation but that'll never happen if staff doesn't settle once and for all what is the true storyline of an area and what isn't. 

 

What I would like to see is staff proactively settling these issues. I understand and appreciate the hesitant to micromanage but you only have to do it once, after that the bar is set. 

Edited April 30, 2021 by Henning

[slick!]

2 minutes ago, Henning said:

You can't have two conflicting truths on the server. They RP that the entire area is New Chinatown and we only RP their small strip, neither of us are wrong but neither of us are right because we've both developed our own truths through our own RP. That's where staff needs to intervene. I would love for each community or area to have a combined leadership panel of all the factions that like you said encourages cooperation but that'll never happen if staff doesn't settle once and for all what is the true storyline of an area and what isn't. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown,_Los_Angeles

Do some research on Sonoratown's demise, the rise of Little Italy, it's fall, and the rise of New Chinatown before you call it a conflicting truth. We compliment one another, but you don't seem to think that.

[DasFroggy]

20 minutes ago, Henning said:

I think people get the wrong impression that we take up these projects because we want power and control

As someone who roleplays on both sides of the legality line, I would honestly prefer that you eventually gain power and control.  One of the biggest barriers between the legal and illegal communities is a sort of lack of IC self-management, specifically a criminal organization that enforces rules and authority over the criminal elements in their area.

 

The closer an organization gets to being an established and controlling force of an area larger than a select few city blocks, the more "rogue" crime becomes a problem, eating into trust and profit.

 

So, from a criminal and civilian perspective, if you want power and control? Go for it. Just be sure to use it to control the rogue elements that give criminals a bad OOC name.

[Trupiano]

Just now, slick! said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown,_Los_Angeles

Do some research on Sonoratown's demise, the rise of Little Italy, it's fall, and the rise of New Chinatown before you call it a conflicting truth. We compliment one another, but you don't seem to think that.

Bro lmao, chill.

 

I wasn't trying to insult you or your faction, I understand you have your own basis for your own RP. But it's been made very clear that LS is not 1:1 with LA. Your actually highlighting the issue that I'm pointing out, you have decent evidence and a good claim as to why the entire area is New Chinatown but from my angle there was an Italian faction in Mission row before your faction was ever there and we occupy about the same foot print they did. Does IRL trump IC history? Can you just RP an entire area is yours if there are other factions operating there? This is all shit that should be settled by staff as it's clear by your passive aggressive response that when left to the players, people get upset.

[Chaishi]

I would like to have another faction-like group for characters which represents communities.

 

So it goes like this in ranking:

Community

Faction

Group

Person

 

Out of four, only community and faction would have it's own scripted chat and grouping. This could help bond people more and rp seeing each other around more.