The State of Robbery RP: Low effort, High gains

[ChromaticDeath]

    Before I get into the body of this discussion I need to preface and say that this is not all robber roleplayers, but it is a loud minority which ruins the RP for those who actually want to put the effort into it. There are people who want to roleplay a robbery, and there are people who want to do robberies to get items. Important distinction, wherein lines are blurred due to proximity which results in "victims" being overly-vigilant and oftentimes not wanting to engage genuine RPers when it rarely happens. I am completely fine with robbery RP as long as it is done properly. I think there's an excess on the server, but I don't have a problem with the concept itself. Only execution. I know people are very likely going to respond with this thread with "Robbery isn't as big a problem as you make it out to be" or "this is an exaggeration" but I can tell you it simply isn't. I've got a main character that's robbed constantly and I respond to robberies all day long on my LEO character. It's a complete epidemic on the server which has forced legal characters into hiding behind closed doors and has made the streets desolate.

 

         So. Robberies. They happen a lot in real life, no doubt, and even more ingame. A startling amount, actually, far beyond the crime rate of any developed country I've ever seen. Let's talk robberies. I have not a single doubt in my mind that both serious criminal roleplayers and legal roleplayers are fed up with the current status quo of armed robberies. As it stands, no roleplay is required to stick someone up, whatsoever, only to search them. If you see a target sitting on the side of the road or passive roleplaying, an emote isn't required to initiate the robbery. This results in piss-poor, low-effort roleplay from some of those criminal players who aren't interested in the heavy RP side of things and only script items... And this in turn, makes legal RPers assume every single robbery will be of this same quality, promoting a toxic environment where neither side wants to roleplay and both want to get it over with as fast as possible. The poorly-roleplaying robber to get his or her sweet sweet items, and the victim for their passive roleplay being interrupted by a guy running up without any emotes to stick them up. It also promotes the slow rise of vigilantism and the militarization/desensitization of CCW and PF holders, which is a massive point of contention in the illegal RP community, and for good reason.

 

As a friend of mine put while we were discussing it:

"It's kind of a self-defeating circle of escalation. Legal RPer gets robbed multiple times, so Legal RPer gets quick on the draw. Illegal RPer starts shortening or not typing their /mes to catch people off guard harder leading to faster and looser RP in the hopes of actually completing a robbery. Legal RPer gets fed up with "low effort" robbers and starts gassing them. Illegal RPer gets fed up with getting gassed and starts doing super quick /mes or none at all, extend, ruin, repeat."

 

     The fact of the matter is, no matter how good someone could be at roleplaying out their robbery, no matter how much effort they put into their emotes, the norm is for there to be minimal roleplay at all, with a mix of IC and OOC chatter ("/showitems", etc.) Granted, things must be taken into account when roleplaying out a robbery, such as time, and that's completely fair - this could be combatted by 'timescaling', which is something we did often on servers I had been to past. (Timescale is simply informing responding parties that the situation would realistically be over or however many turns ahead by the time they arrive, given that emotes take time to write. Players were held by that standard, and situations would be based on turns [e.g. "timescale is 5 emotes, back up and let us RP this please?"]. which kept it fair for all involved and allowed everyone the proper time to do their actions.) But to not roleplay at all, and leave all the effort on the victim themselves because you as a player, playing a character who is committing an intrinsically dangerous act, don't want your character to get caught- is an insult to both the victim, and other people who put more effort into their RP of robbery, walk-ups, and shakedowns. This needs to stop. As we can see in these two clips and many others, out of around ten to fifteen robberies and attempted robberies I've personally been involved in over the last nearly two years on this server, only one of them had enough roleplay to be memorable. Every single other one has been a repeat of the last. Blacked out car/bike rolls up in a nice neighborhood during daylight --> start to emote looking over at it --> the moment the typing indicator goes up, someone hops out, points a gun with no emote whatsoever, and just shouts "hands up!"

 

Here's an example of the kind of fantastic stuff I was subjected to during the last two robberies I have recorded.

 

 

^This was the only emote this person dropped whatsoever, until they were dead, at which point they emoted "being shot multiple times" then disconnected.

 

 

 

Because he didn't get the scripted items he wanted, MASK in this situation kept PMing me to /showitems. He then /pmed me he wanted my character's phone without doing any prior roleplay of taking it, and patted my character down a second time with a similarly short, nondescriptive /me to try to get the gun he saw flash into view when my character exited the vehicle, which was stored middle-back, not where he one-line searched earlier. This robbery was about my PF firearm, not about any sort of development or portrayal, and not for the benefit of this player's character, only the player themselves. When the people my character contacted for help arrived and he was killed, he took it straight to a report, which was handled ingame with a void-, but during the course of it spoke multiple times about needing a refund for his five rounds ammunition and being distressed that he would lose his character's machine pistol.

 

 

Note the use of 'items' in the emote. Robbery should never be exclusively about items. If you're robbing for items first and roleplay second you are the problem.

 

      Is this our new standard of roleplay, where little to no roleplay has to be done at all? This is sad to see, because it's completely jaded and turned off most most legal RPers from RPing outside or in general, and completely destroys any development someone could get off of that interaction. One of the ways gangs initiate new members is having them run an armed robbery because it is scary to rob someone at gunpoint yet I never see any new-bloods trembling as they ask for a wallet, or any spare cash. It's always about the script items it seems, never about the roleplay. I have no doubts those of you in the Illegal RP side are fed up with being smoked by CCW holders while trying to properly RP out an armed robbery, but this is why that happens. If the status quo is that no common courtesy of emoting anything is to be shown by the initiator, why should a passerby or the victim, given it's not failure to RP fear, not extend that same lack of courtesy by going straight to script means? It's toxic, it's reactionary, but it's simply the reality of the matter. This server has turned to cops and robbers.

 

     So I propose this: Staff, if possible- please start paying more attention to robberies and enforcing roleplay standards as much as possible. Someone shouldn't be allowed to simply scroll a machine gun and yell "hands up", that isn't roleplay, that's complete nonsense. Victims shouldn't be held to some roleplay standard if the initiator doesn't bother putting in any emotes themselves. Illegal RPers, police your people, call out bad actors and contribute more into these sorts of scenarios. Drop an emote about your character being nervous. Drop an emote about where exactly your character is checking someone. And stop promoting robberies just for the sake of scoring an easy firearm. It's corny as hell. The term "one bad apple spoils the whole barrel" applies pretty heavily here; most legal roleplayers (myself included) have become so disillusioned with being robbed constantly no matter where we are on the map that we've lost motivation to even log into our character. The burden doesn't completely fall on the initiator, legal roleplayers need to learn how to not assume every robber is going to be the same, and RP out robberies. But until effort is shown on that initiating party's side, why should they bother doing so? It's simply common courtesy on a roleplay server to roleplay, and they receive none, so why should they be obligated to roleplay back? Armed robbery RP as it stands is a self-perpetuating problem with no solution until higher roleplay standards are enforced, be it by staff or by fellow players.

 

 

Discuss. Keep it civil. This isn't a thread to shit on people because you don't like how they reacted to a robbery before or you don't like how they robbed you. Names were omitted from all of my examples for a very good reason, because this thread is meant to address a concern, not be a witch hunt. Thank you, that's all.

 

Edited May 7, 2021 by ChromaticDeath
just realized i put 'loud majority' and not 'loud minority' at the beginning because i lack reading comprehension

[aughh capybara]

On a realer note however, there's two sides to the same coin and the victims can be as badly portrayed as the robbers themselves. On one end, you can have an illegal roleplayer who whips out a gun, shoves it in your character's face and bombard you with words like "/me frisks for items. /me checks around the waist for a gun." for the sole purpose to gain money. Whilst that's happening, you're being ever so rudely rushed and spammed in /b to show your inventory to somebody as they start to insult and belittle you in /b for not typing fast enough, I understand the rushed nature of you being frisked down for 'loot' because a cop can swing around the corner and literally spot what's going on but there's no need to be a dick about it.

Not to mention that legal roleplayers that are getting robbed can rip out their PF weapon with an overall lack of fear and totally magdump the perpetrator, which the perpetrator can't really respond since they were either busy typing or they had let go of the aim function on their mouse.

 

Both sides can be iffy, and it's very rare to see a robbery that's been coherently planned and roleplayed and isn't some random off the cuff thing in the middle of Rockford Hills at 12pm on a Tuesday. Pier robberies are the worst because at any time of the day, there's gonna be someone at the pier.  When was the last time a robber actually sought out things that might be interesting to them besides jewelry, handguns and phones? When has a robber ever asked you for your wallet/purse instead of just /me frisks XYZ. /b showitems stop staller? At the end of the day it's a game, a game that people should be enjoying.

If you're playing like this is a Rust PvP server, maybe you shouldn't be running around for items and glorious loot and start roleplaying with more depth? 

/b stop stalling. 
*me, simply typing as fast as i can*
/b bro stop stalling /showitems fast.  
*still typing out, typing a long enough emote to describe where things are*
/b im forum reporting you. 

 

What I typed above is basically how robberies go on the server. It sucks, but there's absolutely nothing that can be done about it besides some RPQM reports where nobody is found at fault. 

Edited May 6, 2021 by Akali

[Stiggz]

If you don’t wanna be robbed tell staff to make it easier for illegal roleplayers to get firearms and money, until then you’re shit out of luck, and so are we. 

[ChromaticDeath]

8 minutes ago, Stiggz said:

If you don’t wanna be robbed tell staff to make it easier for illegal roleplayers to get firearms and money, until then you’re shit out of luck, and so are we. 

If you bothered to read the post whatsoever I detailed that robbery exclusively for items was poor mentaility and a toxic viewpoint on the concept. We're here on a roleplay server, to roleplay. You don't need another gun on top of the one your character already has to roleplay. If you need a gun to roleplay then there is something seriously wrong with either the situation your character is in, or your outlook. My two criminal characters don't have a gun and they get by just fine. That's something to take up with IFM, the burden of being the gun suppliers shouldn't suddenly fall in the lap of legal roleplayers just trying to exist and play a character.

Edited May 6, 2021 by ChromaticDeath

[Illusory]

what roleplay

[Smilesville]

8 minutes ago, Stiggz said:

If you don’t wanna be robbed tell staff to make it easier for illegal roleplayers to get firearms and money, until then you’re shit out of luck, and so are we.

Remember this quote when robbers suddenly claim they're interested in actually playing a role in a roleplaying game.

 

It was never about the roleplay.

[Subeh]

I very rarely post on the forums but I do feel the need to post here.

 

I've been around GTAW for around two-ish years now (maybe a little less?) and I honestly can't say I've had many issues over those years; I much prefer to just keep to myself and maybe that's why I very rarely encounter many problems. But I digress; the one problem I have had over these two years is robberies. Over the course of those two years I've been robbed 4-5 times; I remember all of them explicitly because of how tremendously horrible they were.

 

My first experience with IllegalRP was being robbed in Vespucci on my first character; there was barely any RP and the entire thing just felt like something I wanted to hurry up and get past. The next 4 or so robberies that I experienced over those years were almost identical and pretty much every other instance of robberies I've heard from others seemed to be the same.

 

I don't know the server's systems nearly well enough to say how this could be alleviated, I just felt it important to help emphasise the problem; I've never had any other issues on GTAW and I generally consider it to be a high quality bastion of RP considering its size and all that, but I do have to admit that robberies are the one thing that I have had tremendous issues with and I'd be lying if I said it doesn't make me limit myself in undesirable ways.

[ScarletRose]

I can agree with this. I've only been robbed about once on the server, like proper robbery. Happened within my first 30 hours on the server about a month ago and I gotta say, it left me a pretty bad first impression when it came to illegal rpers.

I was fishing in sandy shores. When my bag was full, these guys on fast dirt bikes followed me to the fish selling place, purposely waited until I sold the fish, and the proceeded to rob me at gunpoint with what seemed to be submachine guns. The RP was extremely subpar. Mind you, this was my first time being robbed. I heard that you had to fearRP during events such as this. So I was trying my best but struggling to type out detailed emotes and finding scared anims while these guys were practically just yelling at me in ooc chat telling me to showitems and hand all my stuff over. All for what? about $500 and a phone on my character? After that robbed me, they said something about how one of their guys found another target, they sped away after. Indicating that those guys are just riding those bikes up and down the county robbing other randoms without even thinking if their "targets" are worth the time and doing so with minimal rp.

Edited May 6, 2021 by ScarletRose

[Jeroen]

2 minutes ago, Stiggz said:

If you guys quit the massive orgies and street races and took time to get involved in an illegal faction you would understand how big of a pain in the ass it is to get things that are beneficial for illegal roleplay, like guns and money. People don’t buy drugs, and there aren’t enough gun suppliers on the server. Stop saying “ITS POOR RP TO NEED ITEMS” until you know what you’re even talking about. 

Dude, I just bought some drugs on my civilian character. There is certainly a market, but you just need to find the right end users.

[EffPee]

This argument about people 'not robbing for roleplay' always amuses me.

 

I understand that a large amount of robberies are poorly roleplayed and the players that partake in that should be punished and/or taught how to get better at it. HOWEVER, are robbers supposed to just like... not expect a reward? End of the day, our characters are robbing for monetary gain/a come up that might include a weapon or drugs etc. Just because we, the player, are doing it for roleplay, does NOT mean we don't want to actually gain anything from it.

 

There's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to rob someone for their belongings, that's actually the dictionary definition of robbery.

robbery

/ˈrɒb(ə)ri/

 

noun

the action of taking property unlawfully from a person or place by force or threat of force.

 

The issue arises when people substitute sufficient roleplay for a quick come-up. This is where the line is drawn. 

 

21 minutes ago, Stiggz said:

If you don’t wanna be robbed tell staff to make it easier for illegal roleplayers to get firearms and money, until then you’re shit out of luck, and so are we. 

While I don't wholly agree with this statement, it's pretty much hit the nail on the head. Alot of Illegal roleplayers commit robbery because they have barely any other options to get in contact with money and weapons. Even the best roleplayed robberies are done with the desire of some sort of scriptwise gain from it. 

10 minutes ago, Smilesville said:

Remember this quote when robbers suddenly claim they're interested in actually playing a role in a roleplaying game.

 

It was never about the roleplay.

I'll wait for your twenty-five page essay on the matter, but this is very ignorant. You're generalising YET AGAIN and it helps nobody. Illegal roleplayers that WANT to roleplay a robbery are also doing it for the scriptwise gain.,That's what a robbery is for. Even if it's the majority of robbers that don't roleplay sufficiently, this does not mean that there aren't a good amount of people that want to do it for roleplay too.

 

End of the day, do IRL muggers/robbers do it just for something to do, or do they do it for what they might gain out of it?

 

Illegal roleplayers don't have that many opportunities to make money and get weapons without abusing OOC contacts. Until this is remedied, you'll be seeing plenty of poorly roleplayed robberies and it'll be a never-ending cycle. I'm not excusing it, that's just how it is.

Edited May 6, 2021 by EffPee