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Character Abandonment


Chuckles

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The server and its player are more-often-than-not vocal about their advocacy for continuation, longevity and endurance of not only factions but characters, storylines, businesses and schemes. Without lastingness, there is absolutely zero hope for any of those things aforementioned. There is very little accountability, repercussion or correction involved for those who decide to leave characters in the middle of an active narrative. Character desertion not only affects characters with an interest or relationship with said character but also negatively impacts the faction who are left with no excuse, no answer and no forewarning. What I think players should have to do before changing their name or leaving a faction is finish what they started. The convenience to just name change and leave any and all roleplay you were involved in mid segment harmfully affects those who have an egg somewhere in that character's basket.

 

Avoidance is one of the most detrimental instruments to both a faction and other characters' development. Laziness and incompetency has a lot of correlation to this issue and when people are facing adversity, disarray or tribulation the convenience to just leave the character and start over is in its own a tool to reward lazy and inactive characters, essentially, a "get out of jail free card." I am a firm believer in conclusion. And by running out on IC problems with an OOC provision, it leaves a lot more questions than answers and not only ruins the trajectory (with no good reason) for characters, factions and businesses but dead-ends scenes, situations and relationships that have the potential to be a lot more deep-rooted and durable. Ultimately, if somebody wants to leave a character (and they're tied to a faction, business or a storyline) I feel that they should have to realistically dissolve themselves of any situation they're in or at the very least show a thorough and realistic escape plan.

 

When longevity and continuation is brought up most of the sticking points seem to be character kills and a lack of dedication or commitment and this falls into this exact argument. For longevity and continuation to work, the storylines need to stop being cut short and the development needs to be prioritised. Just like players are held to account with character kills, these players who desert their characters need to be held to the same standard. A player who plans on leaving a character when there's an active chain of events should be prohibited until the enactment is concluded. The server prides itself on being a heavy roleplay server but allowing people to jump from character to character with no IC excuse, justification or rationality is very RPG-ish.

 

I get that players are given the freedom to do what they want but I don't think I'm the only one who's sick of having to disregard a scene, storyline or situation because a player's abandoned their character with no reason to, no resources to and no background or history to. I feel that namechanging mid-sequence is one of the most detrimental things to a character's, a faction's and the server's continuation. Now, I'm not looking this to be turned into a rule but I think I'd like to hear the perspective of others in relation to this issue. I know for me this has been sort of a brick-wall situation in tonnes of situations where your character's left on a cliff-hanger because of something outside of its control.

 

Interested to gauge the opinion of the wider community on this. Because I know it's one of my pet peeves.

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I hate this and it's very common in GTA roleplay. People shuffle through new characters like clothes. They kill off good characters to move onto the next one. Some people's average life is a few weeks until they are killed in some silly way. I've watch people who I was involved in active RP situations just.. fly the way of the dodo bird to RP something else. There is sometimes little long term narratives that can be played out as a result of the fact that people just don't stay around too long. 1 week relationships that get treated as the basis of love or murder irritate me. Long term buildup is the stuff RP is made out of.

 

  

Just now, TinyPotato said:

That said, to share frustration and vent, I find part of the issue is quite simply this: People don't RP characters as much as they RP faction members. The character first and foremost exists to participate in an OOC group. Not many people RP the remaining members of defunct factions, for example. When someone feels that their character can no long serve its purpose, ie if the faction they intended to join didn't work out, they're more likely just to ditch it than deal with the fall out. If the character was made to be a gang member, and they get a reputation as a bitch/mark/sell out/hood hopper, that character cannot serve its purpose. Should the purpose of a character not be to portray a human life? Yes it should, in a purist sense, but that's not the attitude most of us have.

 

This is indeed the nature of the problem

Edited by Tickle
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I mean..there isn't much you can do with things like this, if someone gets bored of a character the shelve it and come b ack to it when they are more inspired to portray the character, and most people want to roleplay with their friends and follow them wherever they go, for example I have three different characters and recently have one played one for more then ten minutes because I have no inspiration for the others. It's a "issue" that isn't really much harm and there is nothing you can really do, when someone reaches a dead-end with a character and doesn't vibe wit it anymore, they are going to abandon the idea or come back to it at a later date.

  

2 hours ago, TinyPotato said:

Not many people RP the remaining members of defunct factions,

 

Nobody wants to roleplay in a faction that is to a point of not being enjoyed OOC. We are all here to have fun and enjoy our time and if the faction doesn't give the same joy it did before and is more stressful, I don't blame people for just leaving..nobody wants roleplay to feel like a chore.

 

7 hours ago, Chuckles said:

The server prides itself on being a heavy roleplay server but allowing people to jump from character to character with no IC excuse, justification or rationality is very RPG-ish.

There is nothing admins can do, if they make a rule to prevent that they would ultimately lose players and people would be out-raged, me included. People are here to have fun and if they don't find a character fun it is there right to move on to the next.

Edited by ZaE
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For a heavy roleplay server I feel as the process of renaming doesn’t fit the bill. I firmly believe that assets built on one character shouldn’t be so easily transferred (or not transferred at all) to another “new character” with something as simple as renaming and abandoning the concept you were going for in the first place. 

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1 minute ago, Leggy3 said:

For a heavy roleplay server I feel as the process of renaming doesn’t fit the bill. I firmly believe that assets built on one character shouldn’t be so easily transferred (or not transferred at all) to another “new character” with something as simple as renaming and abandoning the concept you were going for in the first place. 

In a real RP server, though, assets shouldn't determine one's character. Having 1 million in the bank can be RP'd as OOC money, but may be needed to purchase an apartment that's suitable for one's character etc...

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1 minute ago, Leggy3 said:

Exactly, so you don’t need to NC. 

Name-changing involves changing the concept of one's character, though. if one does not enjoy playing a specific character? Then, they name-change to alter their concept. Can't be "John Doe the gang-banger" to "John Doe the mafioso" overnight.

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There are many people who come up with a character concept, realize that it doesn't captivate their attention, and decide to retire the character and make something else. There are a lot of characters that simply can't viably be played because of the way they've been developed. You can't force people to play a character that doesn’t hold their interest, because at the end of the day we're all here trying to have fun.


With that said, the server does have an issue with "expendable characters". People who make characters they don't intend to see through. A lot of these characters tend to be "flavor of the month" types, meant only to stir up trouble and dissipate into the ether when the chickens come home to roost. This might be your average chainrobber who decides to suicide by a cop when they realize the jig is up or a local drug addict who enters a business just to do heroin in front of the customers knowing full well the kind of trouble this will cause. These are characters designed to be expendable, and by the time you make an RPQM report, these characters have already come and gone tenfold.


There is a dissidence in how we - as individual players - value our characters. While some people find a character they can become lost in, many people simply make characters to be disposed of in a blaze of glory, taking anyone and everyone they can down with them. Characters who fail to realistically Fear RP and fail to value their "lives" are usually just an extension of the player’s apathy regarding their character.


The culprit of this is GTAW’s character system, and more specifically name changes. While GTAW allows for a lot of flexibility in how many characters a player can express, and how easily one can switch between them, the nature of name changes means that there are no lasting drawbacks to losing a character. You simply name change and start anew with all the resources you once had. While I imagine many people would quickly become frustrated with a system that lacks any sense of progression - a system that forces you to start entirely anew after losing one’s character - the nature of name changes means that all characters can at any moment be disposed of with minimal impact.


The only thing anyone loses is the character itself. A player who does not value their character loses nothing at all. In other words, the system benefits - and one could argue even incentivizes - those players who do not value their characters, more than it befits players who do.

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I personally never abandoned a single character of mine. Namechanged? Yes, but only after proper "retirement' of said character. A lot of characters I met, were sort of whims or momentary moods or flavors of the month types. Which is alright to an extent, but shouldn't be prevalent on the server. Because it harms consistency of the server that way. Also I say this again, people should stop playing self-inserts. You are not gangstas and never will be. Accept it finally and create believable characters.

 

Edited by Engelbert
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