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Roleplaying Fire Department response times


hamin

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10 minutes ago, Westen said:

How would private EMS factions work with LSFD's EMS division? Say for example a call about a GSW comes in. I respond, a private EMS responds. Is it a case of whoever gets there first gets it? If that's the case, it's going to become a race to get to scenes first and an overall nightmare to manage, which will definitely lead to OOC tension and conflict which I don't think LFM will want to manage. It means if I don't get to a scene first, I have no roleplay because my sole purpose in FD is a paramedic. I play in the mornings when there's 1 call every 2 hours if you're lucky, so if I'm unlucky enough to get those snagged up by private EMS companies, it could be days before I actually get a call.

It can very well work similarly to the private security factions. Private EMS will not be reached through 911; and then the municipality, or other organizations can establish private contracts. If the city government wishes, it can very well contract private EMS for 911 calls. There's multiple possibilities.

 

OOC friction will exist either way. LSFD historically refused to give up any of its monopoly on medical services.

OOC friction existed when LSSD was implemented.

 

OOC friction was, is, and will always be inevitable as a concept. It's up to the players and factions to play ball. In reality, over the 4 years of this server, none of the iterations of LSFD proved they can provide engaging medical roleplay. It's time that other venues are explored. For all the talk that GTAW staff provides, the fact a staff member is suggesting on this thread a script based solution to cut through the roleplay is a bad joke. Saying "people don't want to do medical roleplay" is a gross overstatement. No, people don't want to do the numbing medical roleplay FD provides.

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25 minutes ago, the_criserk said:

LSFD historically refused to give up any of its monopoly on medical services.

 

wonder where i've heard this one at before

 

Fact of the matter is, and I'm speaking from experience regarding this very same subject. Back on LSRP we faced the same issue and then a private EMS service was created.

 

Did it help? Absolutely. Why? Because they focused on exclusively providing EMS roleplay and tried to stop scenes from taking far too long, which is the current issue. Mundane calls, such as gunshot wounds, beatings and the likes were handled with simple /mes and then the patient was carred off to the hospital-

 

Did it take people away from FD? Some, yes. Mostly those who were mainly interested in the EMT portion, did not want to go through lengthy recruitment processes and gruelling academy processes. I'm not sure if that has changed since I tried out FD here, but I don't understand why they don't follow PD and SD's example of NPCing the academies. At the very least, cut it short. Another thing that bothered me the most was the lengthy probationary phase and field training, just why? It worked without all this unnecessary shit on LSRP as well.

Edited by Airwalk
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1 hour ago, Airwalk said:

 

wonder where i've heard this one at before

 

Fact of the matter is, and I'm speaking from experience regarding this very same subject. Back on LSRP we faced the same issue and then a private EMS service was created.

 

Did it help? Absolutely. Why? Because they focused on exclusively providing EMS roleplay and tried to stop scenes from taking far too long, which is the current issue. Mundane calls, such as gunshot wounds, beatings and the likes were handled with simple /mes and then the patient was carred off to the hospital-

 

Did it take people away from FD? Some, yes. Mostly those who were mainly interested in the EMT portion, did not want to go through lengthy recruitment processes and gruelling academy processes. I'm not sure if that has changed since I tried out FD here, but I don't understand why they don't follow PD and SD's example of NPCing the academies. At the very least, cut it short. Another thing that bothered me the most was the lengthy probationary phase and field training, just why? It worked without all this unnecessary shit on LSRP as well.

 

LSFD has separated recruitment and career paths for people interested only in EMS roleplay. 

The EMS division is being run by people with real-life experience (aka real-life EMTs and paramedics) and really focuses on high-quality EMS RP and developing its manuals actively. 

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In the interests of avoiding a suggestion for an alternative - hopefully a well vetted, structured and contracted EMS alternative a la St. John's - and rubbing people all sorts of wrong ways, I believe this suggestion is really about AVAILABILITY of PRESENT LSFD members during peak body hours when there's too few of them for the too many on the server. Feedback on the LSFD deserves its own thread and focus and, indeed, respect. Having skimmed a bunch of these responses, it's veering into faction bashing and bloated, generalized opinions that tarnish a faction completely in this space. Anyone in a LEO faction really knows how annoying, unfair and repetitive that can be because it's so often based on a few experiences with the same person or same kind of person. And no matter how founded the grievance is, you undermine yourself if you do not take it to the right space, the right people with the right words and attitude. So, this is not encouraging for anyone involved and provides little to no incentives for the LSFD itself to engage meaningfully to find a resolution to this suggestion's purpose. 

 

So to that end, I'm all for a /sendtohospital style alternative that is OKed by leading LSFD members via radio communications and perhaps a command on their end. This means their roles are not being taken out from under them or chosen instead of them, but everyone's experience is made a little easier and more realistic. Maybe it should have a caveat, i.e. if the body you're with cannot exceed a ten minute wait, you must self-transport and take risks in doing so or the body dies. If they can, the NPC LSFD will take them to the hospital. Right now, there are a lot of requests for ALS and so few in the LSPD and LSSD that can - and should - be able to perform that. While self-transporting makes sense in exigent circumstances, those exigent circumstances are tenfold in GTAW and that stops being acceptable after the third time in a night. 

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11 hours ago, SaintBatemanofWallStreet said:

Well that's easy. There are people on this server that like medical RP. But they don't want to be in FD because of the state of the faction.

 

 

This. My IRL friend & another person who I have met on the server joined FD to give a hand and then quit because of the questionable portrayal of the other characters in it. I am not going to name the stereotype, but you can guess it. They moved on to RP for Hope Health Center & Independent Medical Services.

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3 hours ago, the_criserk said:

FD has gone on record many times saying they refuse certain calls cause they can't be fucked to. It also takes a while to respond to situations because they don't want to, because they don't enjoy it.

 

Sorry but this is a blatant lie.

 

A lot of the active FD take almost all the calls they can.

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As a member of the LSFD it's sad to see people pointing fingers at us, when at peek hours we have 3 ambulances and if we are lucky we have 1 Engine on duty. When things go south, we try to convert the 4th unit into an ambulance, but seriously, how can we be at 3 places at the same time? Gangs shooting each other, people beating each other up for no reason.

When we respond, I can tell you that, people try to figure out what's going on, I am not an EMT IRL, but what pisses me off, is that even though you write a long /do and /me, what will about to come and people just /do Pulse zero. DEAD. Do you think it is fun to write long /do's and /me's at every single scene, trying to add or take to make it more enjoyable? Because PHMC will ask for deep details, if I cannot provide them it's my fault, if the victim does say something weird, it is also my fault, because that vital cannot fit the narrative.

I think if you are a victim, you should pay attention to the medical RP, it is a lot to keep that much information in our minds if we are flooded with 6 calls, some are the same ones and people are just AFKing. We usually do RP's between 15-25 minutes at a heavily injured victim's scene, that is depending if the victim is actually answering and their injuries. 

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Having read some replies from FD people, it seems that just allowing /sendtohospital is needed.  We can't have FD people becoming stressed and demotivated because they are just seen as OOC necessities to getting unkilled and back on the streets.  NPC all the low-quality shite scenes where a homie got shot and just wants to be healed quickly, and free up FD to concentrate on the scenes they will enjoy.  They shouldn't feel rushed OOCly, if LEOs could just sendtohospital they could take their time and actually focus on quality with people who actually want to RP with them.  It's already done with DMEC so that bodies aren't just left around, so why not FD?

 

Oddly, we might actually find that if /sendtohospital removes some of the OOC pressure and burnout, the number of online FD actually increases!

Edited by Paenymion
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So the thing about medical roleplay is a lot of the time it results in the medic roleplaying at somebody and not roleplaying with them. The medics that stand out are those that go out of their way to involve their patient in the RP beyond asking for their vitals. And in that small group, you have an even smaller group that explains things in IC chat as they do them. Rather than giving 5 lines to detail how an IV is being set up using terms that even native English speakers will struggle to understand, they explain what's happening IC in simple terms and then include a simple /me about setting up said IV. It's much easier to follow and understand. Extending courtesy to the people you roleplay with is probably the most important thing you can do. Keeping things simple and engaging properly with the patient is a great way of doing that. It will help keep the person engaged. 

 

My primary experience with medical roleplay was on LSRP back when it was the most active. I was quick to get burned out for the same reasons a lot of LSFD members get burned out here. Faction leadership over there really pushed everyone to handle as many calls as possible. There was solo ambulances spammed all over. I stopped playing at peak time to take a break. Someone I RPed with frequently noticed this and encouraged me to log on after midnight as there was pretty much no supervisors or faction leaders on. I quickly discovered a small group of the faction that had a much better approach to medical RP. Rather than forcing themselves to stretch themselves thin and handle as many calls as possible, they grouped up and hand picked calls. Gone were the requests from LEOs to hurry up to their call that is totally a higher priority than everything else going on. Nobody wanted to RP with the 30th person that hour that got shot or beaten with a bat and only wants to respawn. The person that got beaten doesn't want to RP it out either. So they were self-transported. It worked better for everyone else. Meanwhile we had our fun on the more unique calls as we could fully staff an ambulance, an engine and a ladder truck every night. These three vehicles would show up to the one scene. It was a better experience for all involved to have several medics working on one patient. The scene was wrapped up quicker yet everyone got their fair share of roleplay. This unfortunately ended when someone brought it up to the faction leaders as a compliment and praised us. Faction rules at the time dictated that three ambulances had to be out and supervisor permission was needed for an engine to be deployed outside of an MVA or fire scene. Faction leaders were not happy. The motivation we had built up went down the drain. 

 

How does this tie into this thread? Instead of trying to handle the spam of calls that come in, the focus should be on the calls that people are actually interested in. Sink time into the enjoyable calls. Don't page people to come on duty to deal with the 8 people that have just been shot on Forum Drive and then send them to the 10 people who have been shot across the street in retaliation. If people are so against the idea of a private EMS company, have LFM push for a rule change to allow for NPC ambulance responses. The whole trend of police cruisers acting as ambulances will vanish if cops are allowed to NPC ambulances.

 

People will look at the lack of staffing differently if it doesn't have a negative effect on them. I'll use the /sendtomorgue command as an example. It was very frustrating to have the one coroner online to have a 15 minute response time to someone that got ejected from their car and decided to log off instead of roleplaying anything. Or on scenes with multiple bodies, coroners needing to make multiple trips. This isn't a jab at the faction but sometimes there is just too much for them to handle. The solution was to allow LEO factions to /sendtomorgue. There was some days where I was stuck on one scene for my entire playing time because we had to wait for an FD response to treat any survivors, then we had to wait for them to finish at the hospital and return to the scene to declare the others dead, then we had to wait for a coroner to respond once we could explain that an EMT has confirmed the person is dead, then we had to wait for that coroner who later got one more online to help him with the multiple trips. Again, I'd like to make it clear that I'm not saying anything bad about either faction. There is just too much for both to handle right now and it's resulting in bad experiences all around. 

 

The waiting time is what causes a lot of frustration. I had one scene recently where someone was rammed off a motorcycle in the county. It took about 40 minutes to get an ambulance there. The first time I called, I specifically said someone was knocked off a motorcycle so the risk of spinal and neck injuries meant that we could not transport them ourselves. At one point the dispatcher told me to self-transport so I don't think my radio message was even read in the spam. I can't say I blame the particular dispatcher either because they had two other members of the LSSD trying to get their attention and probably other calls to deal with too.  Instead of waiting those 40 minutes doing nothing, we could have had an NPC ambulance respond and continue with our roleplay from there. It's one less call to handle for the LSFD and the players can now no longer be frustrated with the lack of response. 

EDIT: Apparently this was locked as I posted my response. Don't take this as the final post. This was intended to contribute to the discussion.

Edited by Keane
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