The State of Robbery RP: Low effort, High gains

[mj2002]

1 hour ago, Kaxo said:

Report shit RPers, that's all you can do. 

+1

 

Please report these sorts of 'robbers'. Can't act if we're not made aware of the individuals involved. 

[Zayyy]

(not taking anyones side, both sides needs to handle situations properly. if any of the side is breaking rules, just report it)

 

To everyone who is complaining about illegal people robbing with not so many efforts, listen... Everyone in this server acts like a hero.

A lesbian sees two criminals robbing someone who she doesn't know or has any connection with them? 

: Let's be a hero, hides behind the wall and opens fire.

:- Calls 911! There was a robbery here, I gunned down the robbers. I'm a CCW holder!

 

And it's GTA, you can't expect everything to go as it goes IRL.

 

And the person who made this post, I've seen his character going around into situations and shooting at the criminals and scream 'I have CCW'.

 

No hate, I'm legal rp'er myself, but the legal side rp'ers need to be looked at as well. You can't expect all the illegal rp'ers to act all good if we legal rp'ers are gunning them down even though we were not involved in their situation or was their target. Please don't act like a hero, CCW/PF is for your own safety, you use it when your life is in danger, you can't save people from danger who you don't know.

 

If you see anything happening wrong, please report the player. Admins are there to deal with that stuff. They have the shiny green tag for a reason.

 

 

TLDR :- Most of the robbers (not all, some just want to rob) try to be quick as they can to avoid any hero character coming in to rescue their fellow citizen who they don't even know

 

 

Edited May 7, 2021 by Zayyy

[Vash Baldeus]

9 hours ago, ChromaticDeath said:

    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.

 

With all do respect this is the loud majority that ruins it for the good Roleplayers, the last time my character was robbed it was due to the fact that server had just restarted and I just logged in, the trio that robbed my character and her employee were there prior restart without masks or anything of that sort being on business property that had CCTV installed. They abused the fact server restarted to try and avoid CCTV permission, until an admin confirmed the CCTV is there (as outside furniture was not loading yet due to recent server restart). After which one said in "/b CCTV did not have my face on it as I wear a mask" right after he did /mask after was told there's CCTV here. End result was us reporting this poor robbery and ending with 2 out of 3 people being banned for chain-robberies which voided the robbery we had moreover, my characters employee never got the refund back for the stolen items.

 

I am all for a good roleplay experience, but when it's done for the sake of Roleplay not solely to get money or loot, I've had multiple encounters where my other characters were robbed and the way it was done, was a good experience, but as you said the loud majority of the poor executions ruins it for the good rolepalyers who was to actually do it more in-depth.

[Vash Baldeus]

37 minutes ago, Zayyy said:

(not taking anyones side, both sides needs to handle situations properly. if any of the side is breaking rules, just report it)

 

To everyone who is complaining about illegal people robbing with not so many efforts, listen... Everyone in this server acts like a hero.

A lesbian sees two criminals robbing someone who she doesn't know or has any connection with them? 

: Let's be a hero, hides behind the wall and opens fire.

:- Calls 911! There was a robbery here, I gunned down the robbers. I'm a CCW holder!

 

And it's GTA, you can't expect everything to go as it goes IRL.

 

And the person who made this post, I've seen his character going around into situations and shooting at the criminals and scream 'I have CCW'.

 

No hate, I'm legal rp'er myself, but the legal side rp'ers need to be looked at as well. You can't expect all the illegal rp'ers to act all good if we legal rp'ers are gunning them down even though we were not involved in their situation or was their target. Please don't act like a hero, CCW/PF is for your own safety, you use it when your life is in danger, you can't save people from danger who you don't know.

 

If you see anything happening wrong, please report the player. Admins are there to deal with that stuff. They have the shiny green tag for a reason.

 

TLDR :- Most of the robbers (not all, some just want to rob) try to be quick as they can to avoid any hero character coming in to rescue their fellow citizen who they don't even know

 

Fully agree, my character only engages a situation when it's either on her property (I.E. Business or Home) or it's someone she knows (I.E. Employees / friend), otherwise she'd discreetly notify 911. Moreover my character tries to de-escalate situations instead of flaring it up. What you describe is what I've noticed myself where you see someone get involved even though there's security on premises or cops are around the corner.

 

A gun is not a toy, you don't draw and pull the trigger until the magazine runs dry, it's a tool to be used as a last resort when there is no other way to resolve the situation without hurting anyone or when trying to de-escalate the situation failed and people's life is in danger. Not as a Vigilante toy. I used to work security, armed security, during my shifts I've had multiple occasions where things escalated quickly where things go a bit out of hand, I did not draw my gun as I fully understood that there HAS to be direct threat to life in order for me to have justification to use it. Instead of that I opted to call 911 and call for other guards who were on shift to back me up while we are doing our best to de-escalate the situation until police arrives. Luckily I've never had to use the gun, I no longer work security but I did learn a life lesson in knowing what it's like actually carrying a weapon all the time, it's a big responsibility as a gun can take a life, after which you will be held accountable and potentially prosecuted unless proven you were doing the right thing then & there.

 

P.S.

Reason my character has a CCW is due to the fact that originally was supposed to be a Deputy Director of a security company which due to IC events never happened so license is there.

Edited May 7, 2021 by Vash Baldeus

[knppel]

10 hours ago, ChromaticDeath said:

A startling amount, actually, far beyond the crime rate of any developed country I've ever seen.

I've said it times and times again before:

Given we do not actually task the police factions of actually policing the server to prevent crime, we'd need applications for robbers imo.

People can go and sit in their "but we're past the cops and roobers stage boohoo" corner as much as they like, virtual reality shows simply that people do what they're allowed to do.

 

At the current state I'm immediately allowed to attempt to commit any crime, as long as I can tell a tale how my char is a criminal and an idiot that doesn't care for risk.

To enforce the law, I have to play 20 hours minimum and then go through a selective application process.

 

It's no rocket science that people end up robbing given it's ffa.

9 hours ago, Subeh said:

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.

Picking up above: That's because the server demands zero standards from robbers. Anyone may do it, as mentioned.

The only requirement the rules give is that you don't preemptively kill your target (that'd be deathmatch).

 

Make illegal factions gatekeepers for becoming an armed robber. Force unaffiliated players to actually be creative.

Only option.

2 hours ago, i dont wanna od in LA said:

If I'm roleplaying a poor character & then see a fucking g-wagon in the middle of South Central, I'll surely take their shit. 

Get out of your bubble please, I trust you might not do it but plenty others just scout Rockford, Burton, Vinewood or Sandy Shores etc. if no convenient g-wagon to righteously be offended by passes by South Central, but they want some action.

Edited May 7, 2021 by knppel

[i dont wanna od in LA]

18 minutes ago, knppel said:

Get out of your bubble please, I trust you might not do it but plenty others just scout Rockford, Burton, Vinewood or Sandy Shores etc. if no convenient g-wagon to righteously be offended by passes by South Central, but they want some action.

What I was trying to say - move smart or pay the price. People are far too mindless, and therefore make themselves very easy targets especially in crime ridden areas & particularly South Central, LS.

[Wolfhound]

16 minutes ago, i dont wanna od in LA said:

What I was trying to say - move smart or pay the price. People are far too mindless, and therefore make themselves very easy targets especially in crime ridden areas & particularly South Central, LS.

This I have to agree with. A lot of people don't think twice and it goes for both sides. Legal characters tend to roam about neighborhoods and ignore the obvious red flags of it being a gang controlled territory and whatever else then comes the trouble. Illegal characters roam about looking for victims but they never asked themselves: "Is this guy possibly armed? Isn't this neighborhood patrolled by the cops more?" Or lord forbid, they start doing stupid shit like seeing an actual HOMELESS character and think they are a walking ATM suddenly.

[i dont wanna od in LA]

1 minute ago, Wolfhound said:

This I have to agree with. A lot of people don't think twice and it goes for both sides. Legal characters tend to roam about neighborhoods and ignore the obvious red flags of it being a gang controlled territory and whatever else then comes the trouble. Illegal characters roam about looking for victims but they never asked themselves: "Is this guy possibly armed? Isn't this neighborhood patrolled by the cops more?" Or lord forbid, they start doing stupid shit like seeing an actual HOMELESS character and think they are a walking ATM suddenly.

I agree. I see both sides (because the issue exists on both ends, obviously), however I feel like it's more visible on the pseudo-legal side. There's a load of people roleplaying white brits (??? why???) walking around gang neighborhoods and acting like it's their hometown. This shit definitely ain't the play.

[Engelbert]

13 minutes ago, i dont wanna od in LA said:

I agree. I see both sides (because the issue exists on both ends, obviously), however I feel like it's more visible on the pseudo-legal side. There's a load of people roleplaying white brits (??? why???) walking around gang neighborhoods and acting like it's their hometown. This shit definitely ain't the play.

It does not happen just in gang infested neighbourhoods, it also happens in relatively calm parts of the city. Not to mention, that somehow gangs started to move into relativelz developed areas like Canals or Mirror Park. And no before people begin barking. Los Santos is not Los Angeles, just because in Echo park you can find gangs, doesn't mean you can move gangs into areas where houses cost up to a million$ in LS.

Edited May 7, 2021 by Engelbert

[Vash Baldeus]

15 minutes ago, Engelbert said:

It does not happen just in gang infested neighborhoods, it also happens in relatively calm parts of the city. Not to mention, that somehow gangs started to move into relatively developed areas like Canals or Mirror Park. And no before people begin barking. Los Santos is not Los Angeles, just because in Echo park you can find gangs, doesn't mean you can move gangs into areas where houses cost up to a million$ in LS.

Yup, that was noticed gangs try to rob more wealthy parts of the town randomly drive by and scope out people who come out of their house and such, that's a tad shows they don't do it for the sake of Roleplay, they do it for the loot.