Bars and clubs...

[TheSenate]

5 minutes ago, Peak. said:

Isn't it like $10-15 tho? 

 

Supporting the server and getting benefits is a great idea. 

Placing a map blip to advertise your business being open should not be locked behind an OOC paywall. That is actively detrimental to new and upstart businesses run by players who might not have that money to spare. It also harms the experience of all other players who are using the map as a reference for what is open at a given moment. Making map blips a free feature for businesses would be, in my opinion, a necessary quality of life improvement for the server as a whole. 
 

We shouldn’t be putting up barriers to support and bring life to the server by forcing players to pay for necessary features. (IE: The fact we make mappers pay a monthly fee to map, and the fact we apparently make business owners do the same to mark their establishment on the map.)

[Felos]

I've been thinking about opening a business on my alt account. However getting a business is simply not easy. "Just lease the business bro", but the leasing right now is opened only for garages and offices which don't offer the "unique" roleplay people speak about in this topic.

 

While I understand they have a LOT of requests, I'll have to wait 2 months and hope that next leasing round I can possibly apply for owning a unique RP business.

[99]

1 hour ago, Topinambour said:

Yep... the lack of map blip is a solid killer for most businesses, which means paying OOC money is a pre-requisite for a successful business :x Not amazing. 

I'm not sure why it's not promoted more to use the open business list in the menu. You don't need a blip to see the open businesses and if you click on it, it will GPS right to the location. Blips shouldn't be a killer for businesses, as its just a vanity item. I understand it's a nice visual, but the open business list is readily available for anyone to open and use.

[Shaderz]

1 hour ago, 99 said:

I'm not sure why it's not promoted more to use the open business list in the menu. You don't need a blip to see the open businesses and if you click on it, it will GPS right to the location. Blips shouldn't be a killer for businesses, as its just a vanity item. I understand it's a nice visual, but the open business list is readily available for anyone to open and use.

 

Except it's not just a vanity item at all. People would rather use the map than the open business menu because the name alone sometimes can be ambiguous, whereas the icon additionally tells them what type of business is open. For example, you can easily make up that a certain establishment is a nightclub if it has a music icon, or a bar/lounge if it has a glass one, or a strip club if it's a high heel, regardless of the name. It's why the blip is so, so important, as people subconsciously decide where to go highly based on them. Granted these three icons I just mentioned are arguably the most used and visited ones, there's a reason it's not uncommon to see other businesses baiting customers by placing them (mostly the glass one) on the map, when in reality they don't relate to what the icons are commonly associated to which leads to people entering the interior, standing still for five seconds and then walking out because the place isn't what they expected it to be.

[99]

2 hours ago, Shaderz said:

 

Except it's not just a vanity item at all. People would rather use the map than the open business menu because the name alone sometimes can be ambiguous, whereas the icon additionally tells them what type of business is open. For example, you can easily make up that a certain establishment is a nightclub if it has a music icon, or a bar/lounge if it has a glass one, or a strip club if it's a high heel, regardless of the name. It's why the blip is so, so important, as people subconsciously decide where to go highly based on them. Granted these three icons I just mentioned are arguably the most used and visited ones, there's a reason it's not uncommon to see other businesses baiting customers by placing them (mostly the glass one) on the map, when in reality they don't relate to what the icons are commonly associated to which leads to people entering the interior, standing still for five seconds and then walking out because the place isn't what they expected it to be.

That would ring true if the map actually showed the business name with the icon, which it doesn't every time. Once the map reaches a certain amount of icons, even if you click on the icon it doesn't show the name. So you're in the same predicament. It would be one thing if it worked all the time, but it doesn't.

 

The open business menu should show any business who does /openbusiness, but as I have been informed it only shows businesses who use /bad, so it's not as useful as I previously said. So the icons and the /openbusiness menu are still stuck behind the donator package with /bad in it. That sucks big time 😒

Edited November 16, 2021 by 99

[Frezemis]

4 hours ago, Felos said:

I've been thinking about opening a business on my alt account. However getting a business is simply not easy. "Just lease the business bro", but the leasing right now is opened only for garages and offices which don't offer the "unique" roleplay people speak about in this topic.

 

While I understand they have a LOT of requests, I'll have to wait 2 months and hope that next leasing round I can possibly apply for owning a unique RP business.

Remember! Property Management isn't your enemy! All it takes is a message to Nightmare Night/Wuhtah and including Selena and myself and we can discuss opportunities for unique roleplay.

 

OT

We are aware of the.. 2-4 bars being opened at once and the lack of other businesses like.. coffee shops and other unique roleplay businesses. For me to roleplay my character not being able to get freshly brewed coffee for the past few days made me realize there's literally no coffee shops opened during the timezone I play in. It's all clubs and bars. While we can't really do much and tell people not to run their businesses, we can limit the amount of clubs and bars we will be giving out towards the future to help level the playing field and I do agree, there are far too many clubs and bars right now. We will keep our eyes open for alternatives of how we can balance this out but at the current moment we have nothing. I will continue to keep eyes on this topic and read through the rest of the replies to see if there's any good ideas.

[Lindsie]

Long as business RP is behind paywall of real money, its a no from me. Also if people pay real money, just to get to run business, of course they wan't ingame monetary gain for their investment, clubs and bars are best way to do that.

[Alyssa McCarthy]

Have to agree, there would be a lot more businesses open if there wasn’t a paywall for blips.

 

People who run businesses and factions are the servers ‘content creators’ and are, by and large are the people who make GTA:W feel organic. Without them, GTAW would quickly become stale and boring.

 

The current system of blips almost forces these very same people to pay a monthly fee to provide a place / scene of roleplay to dozens (or even hundreds), of players.
 

The way this is managed seems counter intuitive, if anything, your content creators are the very people you should be rewarding, not charging.

[eTaylor]

6 hours ago, Frezemis said:

Remember! Property Management isn't your enemy! All it takes is a message to Nightmare Night/Wuhtah and including Selena and myself and we can discuss opportunities for unique roleplay.

 

OT

We are aware of the.. 2-4 bars being opened at once and the lack of other businesses like.. coffee shops and other unique roleplay businesses. For me to roleplay my character not being able to get freshly brewed coffee for the past few days made me realize there's literally no coffee shops opened during the timezone I play in. It's all clubs and bars. While we can't really do much and tell people not to run their businesses, we can limit the amount of clubs and bars we will be giving out towards the future to help level the playing field and I do agree, there are far too many clubs and bars right now. We will keep our eyes open for alternatives of how we can balance this out but at the current moment we have nothing. I will continue to keep eyes on this topic and read through the rest of the replies to see if there's any good ideas.

Create a scalable incentivizer you can hover over desirable business types (service industry). Justify and construct these incentives in the form of reasonable subsidies which can be awarded in character. That way you didn’t have to manage a hard stop on bars and clubs, which will do more harm long term. You’ll be able to have a more direct and immersive control point into business development, and artificially increase the value of said businesses. 

[Mahitto]

There certainly is a way to mend this issue but it's more complex than restricting the number of clubs and bars. There's a reason why so many people open them, want to work in them or go to them. It's both because of the incentive (money) as well as the fact they're social hubs.

 

It's a shame, I'd love to see a much wider variety of businesses, but most unique businesses lack one of the two.

 

Take a shop that sells natural remedies, for example. Even with the government money, it's basically empty - who would want to work there and who would visit it? Even if, let's say, it gets a handful of customers, how many of them would return every other day to make running such a business worth it. Or take almost every other unique business, same thing applies. 

Edited November 16, 2021 by Mahitto