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Throwaway Characters, Good, Bad?


AlphaBatal

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Hey folks. I'm wondering what the opinions of the community is on this question. Issue? Maybe, maybe not. But do you reckon that making throwaway alts is something that should keep happening on the server, do you reckon people should have the ability to make characters for a single purpose (muggings, pornography, prostitution) and should there be a limitation in the rules?

Here's the hook that's brought this thread to life. Do you reckon that all the poorly-roleplayed criminality on the server can be avoided if people actually had to invest time into a character and shouldn't new players (some of which shouldn't have gotten through the starting application) have time to settle in before they start ramming folk in their cars or running at them with bats?

From what I've heard, a bunch of people in the recent MPD assault were just that; characters that we either new or not actively played, still receiving their starter paychecks. Why do folk need to be forced into developing engaging characters instead of just doing shit for OOC kicks, OOC gains and OOC chaos on alts that don't even have a day in their /stats hours.

If a rule is imposed, should faction characters be given a pass on it? Factions QC their members, but most of the silly stuff you see is from factionless (for obvious reason, since those characters aren't characters as much as they are, in essence, slot fillers) roleplayers, from what I've seen.


(( dont flame or derail the thread lest it be locked. i'll report whoever sniffs glue and hits someone else with the non-constructive "you dont know what ur talking about" ))

Edited by AlphaBatal
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Bad. 

 

By definition "throwaway" means that it is used for a short period of time for a specific task. This obviously does not involve the sort of in-depth and drawn-out character development that creates interesting narratives and nuance in roleplay.

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Depends.

 

Throwaway alts can be very useful for temporary flavor rp, like rping a homeless guy, or a social worker, or some other temporary character that is useful for positive constructive story roleplaying.

 

Throwaway alts can also be very destructive, as OP mentioned, created for doing destructive or troll rp as in the examples the OP mentioned.

 

50 minutes ago, AlphaBatal said:

Why do folk need to be forced into developing engaging characters instead of just doing shit for OOC kicks, OOC gains and OOC chaos on alts that don't even have a day in their /stats hours.

Because they get off on their OOC kicks, gains, and chaos.  They get off on fucking up other people's rp and jerking the staff's chain.  Not everybody is creative enough to develop engaging characters, and these people don't really care about doing that.  They want to interact with other players, but they can't really imagine how to roleplay a developed character that's even a little bit interesting, so they default to laughs, kicks, trolling, and mugging.  It's sad but true.

 

Rather than deny all players the ability to make temporary characters, staff could make a rule against abusing that feature, or require a certain number of in game hours before enabling that feature for new players.

 

50 minutes ago, AlphaBatal said:

a bunch of people in the recent MPD assault were just that; characters that we either new or not actively played, still receiving their starter paychecks. 

 

Too bad they didn't care about how they were fucking up the rp that the characters concerned about the IC issue were trying to do at the police station.  All they cared about was wrecking shit and causing chaos.  It was a laugh, some fun, and a chance for them to jerk the staff's chain.  Same thing happened about a year ago with those riots.  People can argue that oh it's realistic that dumbasses show up at protests to cause trouble, and of course, that happens constantly irl.  That's completely true, AND that doesn't change a single thing about these people deliberately choosing to fuck up other players' rp and cause problems for the staff who are trying to do their jobs monitoring a big IC event, instead of trying to rp developed long term characters who are revolutionaries or other people who realistically do that kind of thing.

 

These problems aren't game feature problems, they're staff QC problems.

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I think that police station rush thing is being blown of proportion and being beat over like a dead horse now.

 

It happened, PD took a loss, some protesters took an L. Time to move on and not linger on it.

 

as for throwaways, they have their purpose at time to improve aspects of niche RP that do not warrant a full time “proper” character for one reason or another.

 

 

Edited by Memozzy
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30 minutes ago, Memozzy said:

I think that police station rush thing is being blown of proportion and being beat over like a dead horse now.

 

It happened, PD took a loss, some protesters took an L. Time to move on and not linger on it.

 

as for throwaways, they have their purpose at time to improve aspects of niche RP that do not warrant a full time “proper” character for one reason or another.

 

 

There's lessons to be learnt and observations to be made in the way players conduct themselves in massed events such as that. Say what you will, but accounts of events will show that the people I mentioned used it as an excuse to cause chaos that doesn't impact them in any meaningful way; that's to say, without exposing their precious characters to criminal charges. It's a (I hope) realistic roleplay server, not Postal 2. Right?

 

 

3 hours ago, jcat said:

Throwaway alts can be very useful for temporary flavor rp, like rping a homeless guy, or a social worker, or some other temporary character that is useful for positive constructive story roleplaying.

This. In my eyes, it's a non-issue when it doesn't involve something that could lead to repercussions you can disregard. Explore concepts, sure. Do some flavor roleplay, sure. 


Sure, people that escalate protests exist IRL too, that much is true; thing is, they get caught for destroying public property and have to live with the sentences on their record. Get denied work, get denied rights such as voting or purchasing firearms. The people that do that here just don't care. Their characters weren't characters a year ago when they burnt down the Davis firehouse and aren't characters now, when they assaulted the primary station of the PD. Would I want to see Skye Love-tier activists doing this? Yes, absolutely. I want to see people in those riots that I'd be able to encounter on the street tomorrow, characters that won't disappear once their primary purpose of sowing chaos has been complete.

Same for 4 hour mugging alts and ""escorts"", the latter of which often namechange once they've reached their arbitrary goal of acquired script cash.


The GTA:World roleplayer is an interesting animal in that aspect. An animal which will and can optimize the roleplay and development out of their experience to mitigate risks and maximize gains, be they money or a rising stockpile of property/cars/guns/narcotics.

 

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Sorry to all. I'm not going to read anything. I just wanted to say this...

 

I hate most people using Alts. The only people I accept having Alts (not that me accepting them or not matters really lmao), are those people who have a lot of time to spare to the game or... Aren't really doing anything significant on any of their characters. Guys roleplaying somebodies in criminal groups, I don't think should be using multiple Alts (unless they are lifers).

 

I personally use one character... If he dies, he's dead. If he becomes a lifer, then I'll probably use an Alt. But I mostly only use one character nowadays because I don't have many hours to spare for RP anymore.

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I dedicate 95% of my time on one character, and then 5% of my time on another character, when I am clearly not in the mood or unable to initiate any meaningful roleplay on my main character. Usually, it applies when my character's either in segregation or is severely wounded in the hospital.

Throw-aways are fine only if they are conducted properly.

Edited by DLimit
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Throwaway characters encourage reckless behaviour and unrealistic portrayal based on the fact that people have little regard for the long-term effects of their actions because they know the character doesn't have a future anyway. The fact that name changes help you keep your assets also encourage this kind of behaviour in robbery squads and people creating flavour of the week FB escorts to gain money quick.

 

You can also use throwaway characters relatively easily to knowingly further the interests of particular groups, which is borderline metagaming imho, essentially being pawns that the players don't even care about.

 

I'd be curious to see how things would change if a CK or namechange forced you to have to wait a month until you could join any faction, to "establish your character". I mean, it wouldn't even matter because we have character slots to bypass this, but it feels like factions are a revolving door of people who remove one character just to return two minutes later, which devalues the life of individual members, particularly when they're just street level bangers or similar.

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