Rule 6 - Removing under 16s

[barrio ruler]

32 minutes ago, Prophet said:

The whole 12-year-old character thing is just a bit odd to me. Why does anyone wanna play a child? I can get sixteen in a gang. But playing a prepubescent character to force your way into gunfights is beyond tacky.

 

my current character i started at around 12 or 13, i think im doing pretty okay. i can see the points being made but i dont think it should be bumped up to 16 and nothing under.

32 minutes ago, Suraru said:

Should be pushed up to 14, high school age.

i still think 12 should be the limit but if it were pushed up to 14 it really wouldn't be bad

[Cocaine Capital]

1 hour ago, Suraru said:

 

Its also disgusting to see the rest of the r9 breaches, like bestiality which has been reported a few times. Should we remove dogs from the game too? Or, should we just keep banning creeps when they crop up.

 

 

Its been proven time and time again that most senators are out of touch, senile morons who think violence in video games makes kids more violent, despite countless studies disproving that fact. Hell, my single digit years were spent playing Halo with my dad, a very violent video game, yet I'm borderline pacifist.

See, the comparison there, while I understand where you're getting at, is invalid. I've seen, in my 4ish years here and countless characters, perhaps 2-3 dogs that weren't a faction dog like a K9,  yet I've seen so many (M) in my day under the age of 16 either commit a r19 violation or violate r19. I've seen 2-3 instances of a person being banned for bestiality, but I've seen 50+ banned either as an M for violating r19, or someone violating r19 against an M. In my sad and unfortunate roleplay "career" expanding 14 years now, I've barely seen any bestiality, but so much of what would now be considered a R19 violation that it sickens me. 

 

And if you'd like, I could go on a deep dive, where plenty of people claiming mental illness defense IRL on a murder or assault trial, point to their own use of violent video games as motive for doing what they did, but that's not what this suggestion is about, it's about the age of characters. 

 

57 minutes ago, Suraru said:

 

12 isn't prepubescent, but yeah I do agree. Should be pushed up to 14, high school age.

He used the wrong term, preadolescent. Which is basically the same thing and confused constantly when arguments like this are brough tup. 

[Astralsomnia]

25 minutes ago, Cocaine Capital said:

See, the comparison there, while I understand where you're getting at, is invalid. I've seen, in my 4ish years here and countless characters, perhaps 2-3 dogs that weren't a faction dog like a K9,  yet I've seen so many (M) in my day under the age of 16 either commit a r19 violation or violate r19.

 

I guess I've been lucky then. I will admit, I have had a few instances of adult characters trying to solicit my minor character, but I just report and move on since the admins will ban them almost instantly for it.

 

Again, I would suggest an approval process for players who want to play minors, and a requirement should include another player who can act as their legal guardian. This would solve a lot of issues, and create a lot of realistic roleplay scenarios. I would say it would help filter out bad RPers, but tbh the current application system we have in place doesn't even do that for the general population.

[PeopleKind]

I agree. The other day I got jumped & robbed by 5 minors on my alt all because she said "Go flirt with someone your own age, dude" after these minor characters were calling her sexy & shit. Of course this was in Davis as well.

 

The issue comes into play when you have 12-15 year olds attacking grown ass adults & spam clicking to win fights without acknowledging the obvious strength & size differences. A lot of them only start RPing their age & size accordingly when it comes down to facing punishments or being tased/apprehended by police.

 

At the end of the day, I believe in realism, however in this case you really don't need to be anything less than 15/16 for the RP to work. Yes, gangs IRL heavily utilize underage children for crimes & recruitment, however you don't need that for your RP. Can easily do the exact same RP with an 16+ character. Cops aren't going to treat you any differently if you're 12 than they would if you're 18 if you're going around beating up adults & committing felonies. 

 

At the very least, up it to a minimum of 15/16, anything less than that isn't needed for proper RP. 

Edited October 20, 2023 by PeopleKind

[Astralsomnia]

1 minute ago, PeopleKind said:

Cops aren't going to treat you any differently if you're 14 than they would if you were 18 if you're going around beating up adults & committing felonies. 

That's not true. Both IRL and in game I've gotten out of shit by pulling the crying white girl card.

 

2 minutes ago, PeopleKind said:

 Of course this was in Davis as well. If you're gonna RP a minor, do it properly or don't do it at all.

Honestly? Shitty RP isn't exclusive to minors, especially in Davis. Its basically RDM central there, but the entire server has an issue with people who barely stay in character just so they can instigate fights to PvP. I'm actually currently taking a hiatus from playing because its incredibly frustrating to see legit RPers get jailed for technical infractions, while players who don't even take RP seriously can flagrantly break rules with rarely more than a verbal warning.

I don't have a solution to this, but banning minors from the server I know isn't one.

[Coburn]

2 hours ago, Suraru said:

 

Budget. Creating a unique ped model that doesn't follow the same skeleton rig can be a waste of time and resources in a game that's already huge.

I imagine it was planned at some point, there is a high school in Los Santos (although no middle or elementary), and they've existed in previous titles by Rockstar.

 

Plenty of other M rated games haven't cared though, I watched my boyfriend accidentally run over a kid in Cyberpunk last night during a car chase, you can adopt kids in Skyrim, and Buldur's Gate lets you punt goblin children off cliffs.

 

Yeah, with a budget of 265 MILLION dollars, who've basically included a flight simulator, golf game etc in the game itself. they decided to stop because "kids" were a bit too much.

 

No, it was deliberate since the game is essentially a war crime simulator for gamers, and the devs know it. GTA:W is no different.

[Astralsomnia]

Just now, Coburn said:

 

Yeah, with a budget of 265 MILLION dollars, who've basically included a flight simulator, golf game etc in the game itself. they decided to stop because "kids" were a bit too much.

 

No, it was deliberate since the game is essentially a war crime simulator for gamers, and the devs know it. GTA:W is no different.

GTA5 cut a lot of features from previous titles. GTA4 was more of an immersive sim than 5 is. And again, previous Rockstar/T2I titles have included children.

 

GTA is hardly a warcrime simulator, and barely earns its M rating. Try playing the other games I mentioned. Or if you want a real warcrime simulator try out Rimworld; that game literally allows you to harvest people's organs, then sell their family members a cowboy hat made from their flesh. And yes, even Rimworld has children, actually it has everyone from newborns to elderly.

[DLimit]

6 hours ago, Cocaine Capital said:

While I understand some people have the want to live a fantasy as a teenager joining a gang, or roleplaying a homeless child or any of the other countless reasons that would drive an adult to portray a child (This taking into account, this game should really be played by 18 according to most countries respective ratings board). The portrayal of a child in this game leads to more trouble than it's worth. 16 years of age for factions, would be a great push in the right direction, because that's normally when a person will engage in the hyperinflated actions that we have on this server, versus a 13-14 year old for example. The age of 16 opens up freedom in the real world for many people due to the invention of drivers licenses and most commonly the minimum age to work a job to experience a less sheltered life. 

 

For non faction related characters, we've seen countless times poor portrayals of underage people, as well as the unfortunate oversexualization of said characters. This is why I say it leads to more trouble than it's worth. Most of the time, at least according to the reports section and the constant bans we see IG, those playing under the age of 16 are banned for oversexualization, or other players are punished due to their own oversexualization of said characters. We've already got a no tolerance policy on this type of roleplay, so why not, just nip it in the butt for lack of better term, and get rid of minors in it's entirety except for when it's necessary for a gang, and at that point keep it at the age of 16, to avoid unrealistic actions and oversexualization of minor characters. 

Shouldn't really aim to simply ban minor characters because a few oversexualized kids. By a few, we're talking less than 1% of the population. Even then, at least half of the over-sexualized minor characters were a part of some unofficial group or official faction. Still, a huuuge minority. If we followed this logic, then we would ban guns and gangs due to the poor portrayal of gun violence and death-matching caused by a minority of the playerbase.

Simply ban those who infringe it. I've seen tons of properly portrayed minors. Shouldn't ruin the experience, for all, due to a smaaaall minority.

Edited October 21, 2023 by DLimit

[FatBoyTrell]

3 hours ago, PeopleKind said:

The issue comes into play when you have 12-15 year olds attacking grown ass adults & spam clicking to win fights without acknowledging the obvious strength & size differences. A lot of them only start RPing their age & size accordingly when it comes down to facing punishments or being tased/apprehended by police.

But imagine.... If the PLAYERS that did that would get punished, and not everybody who actually can roleplay a minor in a gang. 

[Barbary]

I'm still not in support of raising the minimum age to 16 (14, maybe, but 16's too much) but I do have to echo the problem that one of the biggest problem with minor characters is that often times they don't really act their age. Part of me wonders if what we really need is a new rule requiring M characters to fear RP even more than an adult. A lot of kids have the problem of acting like they're Spartans from Halo. Hell, it often feels like they RP less fear than other OCG characters that are 18+.

 

It's not a gang issue but it's certainly a portrayal issue that needs to be mitigated, hopefully in a way that doesn't have collateral damage.